


The Light That I Follow

by kasiapeia



Series: How the Stars Incline Us [2]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: All the character deaths that happen in MEA happen, Both Ryder parents will be making frequent appearances despite uhhhh, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Continuation/Expansion of Thus You Shall Go to the Stars, F/M, I think this is the first non-angsty non-slow burn thing I've ever written/will write, Spoilers, i guess?, kind of?, taking the outline and reworking it because I don't listen to BioWare, these two are just so cute, you know why
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-02-11 00:30:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 41,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12923433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kasiapeia/pseuds/kasiapeia
Summary: Lia Ryder never asked to be made Pathfinder, and she sure as hell isn't prepared for the role. Like it or not, she has the entirety of the Initiative looking up to her now, but the weight of these souls do not have to be carried alone.And Jaal is more than happy to help.They've crossed the universe, and everything that could have gone wrong, seemingly has, but the universe works in strange ways, and the Angaran Resistance fighter might just help her find home.





	1. Prologue

_She can’t breathe._

The air has been knocked from her lungs, and she inhales mouthfuls of the argon and nitrogen based atmosphere out of pure desperation through her shattered helmet. Perhaps, just perhaps, she could wrangle some amount of oxygen out of the toxic air, but all it does it burn her lungs from the inside out, and tears prick her eyes. The world— _Habitat 7, what should have been home_ —spins before her, fading into darkness.

_No!_

She has come so far, she cannot die now! Two and a half million light years from Earth, six hundred years spent in cryostasis, and on her first venture from Ark Hyperion, she suffocates to death on an unknown world?

 _She won’t die like this_.

She won’t have to. It’s been a minute, maybe more, and the lack of oxygen has rendered her limp, and useless. She can barely fight to keep her eyes open, let alone fight off her father as he bends down beside her.

 _“They're spinning up the shuttle!”_ Cora’s voice crackles over the comms. _“ETA is three, maybe four minutes!”_

Alec Ryder’s voice is quiet as he reaches up to the latches that secure his helmet onto the rest of his N7 bodysuit. “We don’t have that long.” He pulls her helmet off in one fluid movement, tossing the broken piece of armour to the side, before forcing his down onto his daughter’s shoulders. “Deep breaths!”

Air, cold, and refreshing, and everything she needed fills her lungs as she inhales. “Dad—” she says as her vision blurs. “What—what are you doing—”

But the Pathfinder says nothing, or if she does, she cannot hear him. It’s like her ears are filled with static, and every bone in her body is screaming out in agony from being tossed from the high platform, and onto the cold ground. He pulls her in for an embrace, his forehead pressed against her helmet like he had when she, and Scott were but children.

 _Scott_.

He is going to wake up from his coma, in unfamiliar territory, only to discover that he had been made an orphan while he’d been asleep. Their mother’s death had ruined him, and now their father—

She shakes her head. “ _Dad_ ,” she tries to plead, but her tongue feels like it’s made of lead. “Dad, no, you can’t.”

“Remember,” she hears him say just as the world fades to black, “I may not have always shown it, but I hope you know that I did love you and Scott, Lia.”


	2. Ursa Minor

If someone had told her the day she’d left Earth that this was how Andromeda was going to be like, she would have laughed. All seven of their appointed “golden worlds,” little more than inhabitable wastelands, the other arks missing, the kett who wanted to kill them, the angara who did not trust them further than they could through them, and the entire Initiative resting on Lia’s shoulders.

“Everything’s coming apart, Scott,” she mumbled into her hands, sitting on a chair beside her brother’s unconscious form. Lexi had said it’d be healthy for Ryder if she talked to him. She isn’t quite certain if it had been her that she’d been talking about, or if she’d been talking about Scott. “You should’ve been the one with Dad. You’d have made the better Pathfinder.”

Despite being twins, and being raised with equal amounts of love and attention from their parents—which was to say, love and attention from their mother, while being ignored by their father—the Ryder twins shared very few similarities. Even physically, they were rather different.

Scott looks like their father does— _did_ , she corrects—with his strong jaw, and bold nose. He had, at least, inherited their mother’s eyes; a brilliant, crystalline blue that could charm anyone Scott harboured even the slightest degree of attraction to. And, because he was Scott, and he flirted with everyone he met, that seems to be quite a lot of people. Appearance wise, he resembles their father, but he carries himself the way their mother had. He is bold, brave, and charismatic—a natural born leader who should have been the goddamn Pathfinder.

She is like her father, in that sense. Scott spoke enough for two people, and as a child, she’d rarely had the opportunity to get a word in. Which was fine, honestly. She’d learned to keep her thoughts, and emotions to herself, although this had made her rather standoffish, and she didn’t have the experience her father had to make up for her lack of charm. They both do share a couple things in common at least, namely their impulsiveness.

“Dammit.” She’s somehow crying again, like she hadn’t cried enough in the past couple of months. The crew of the Tempest have made her feel welcome—at home, even—and though she and Scott have become rather estranged since their mother’s passing, he’s the only one who can comfort her right now. He’s lost his father too, after all.

“Pathfinder—”

The Angara are a peaceful race, in comparison to the Kett, which isn’t saying all that much, but they still do not trust any of the Milky Way colonists that have come into their territory. She can’t say she doesn’t understand why. She’s read enough about Earth history to know how poorly colonization can often go, and it’s been but a few decades since the Kett invaded Andromeda, and started war with the Angara.

It’s for these reasons she is surprised that Jaal, one of the first Angara she had met upon crash-landing onto Aya, had decided to join her in her attempts to colonize Andromeda, and stop the Kett. Their first meeting had not gone well, and the soft-spoken Angara had said little to her, despite joining the ragtag group of misfits that made up her crew. From what little time they have spent together, he seems like a decent fellow, if not rather recluse, but then again, in his defence, they are all aliens to him.

Jaal stops in his tracks, and lazily, blinks his eyes, soft lilac eyelids shuttering irises that look like they hold the entire night’s sky. “My apologies, Pathfinder. I see that you are… busy.” He focuses his gaze on his eye-display, as though he is looking at a new notification that has popped up, but even she can see that the screen is clear. “Ah. I am needed… elsewhere.”

“Jaal.” Lia says his name like a sigh as he turns to leave. The colour seems to drain from his magenta and indigo complexion, as though he fears he’s about to be reprimanded. “You aren’t interrupting anything.”

He hesitates, and then glances back over his shoulder. “Oh.” His cape— _rofjiin_ , she thinks it’s called—is surprisingly missing, revealing the form-fitting teal bodysuit underneath. Quietly, he trots back over to her. “Is this your brother?”

She sniffs, putting aside her doubts, for now at least. “Yeah. Scott.”

His gaze drifts to their intertwined hands; she is holding onto him almost for dear life. “You must miss him.”

“We haven’t really gotten along for the past couple months,” she says, almost under her breath. “But losing Dad…”

“Loss,” Jaal says, “can make one realise what truly matters. The Angara consider family to be one of the most important things in our lives. We share our families with the community, to help us all become better, stronger, with each other’s wisdom.”

She cannot help but smile at his words. He lights up when he speaks of his people. “Yes, you’ve said something like that before. Five mothers, was it?”

“You remembered.”

“Well… yes? It’s my job to remember these things, particularly if they’re about the Angara, or if they’re about a member of my crew. I am the Pathfinder, after all.” Her smile fades from her lips. She cannot forget that due to her father’s actions, which she still does not understand, she is Pathfinder Ryder—or simply “Ryder”—before she is anything else. Before she’s even Lia.

She can’t remember the last time someone called her by her name.

She’s so wrapped up in her own thoughts she almost forgets Jaal’s standing right there. “I must not have understand what your position required of you. Forgive me. I interpreted it as something less…” He struggles to find the word. “Personal?”

Lia lets out a quiet, bitter laugh. “Yes, well, that’s how Dad would have done things, and I… am not my father, and thank God for that. Although, for that matter, I think one Lia Ryder is dangerous enough as it is. Still, that doesn’t mean I don’t miss Dad. Sure, he was an ass sometimes, and he’s all but ignored the two of us ever since Mom got sick, but now that he’s gone…”

“Perhaps you cared for him more than you thought.”

“Yeah,” she says, hearing Jaal’s words, but not entirely taking them to heart. He means well, but he’d never met her father, never known how distant the man was capable of being. She hadn’t understood why Mom had loved him. They seemed to be complete opposites. Ellen had always been kind, understanding, patient, empathetic; Lia aspired to be like her. Alec was… not, to put it simply. “Emotionally distant” was an understatement. It’s almost difficult for her to get her mind around the fact that she never made reparations with him before he died. “Perhaps.”

Ryder takes her shoulder-length hair, and ties it back, away from her brown eyes—her father’s eyes. Another thing she and Scott do not have in common. “Tell everyone to be ready to leave the Nexus by fifteen hundred. I want to be wheels up as soon as possible. We still have the matter of Voeld to deal with.”

Jaal almost looks taken aback by her sudden professionalism, as though she’s grown a second head. She remembers then that the Angara are free and open with their emotions, and do not insist on hiding it. She tries to be accommodating for the cultures of all the people she works with, but she suspects that being open, and being _constantly_ open with Jaal is going to take some getting used to. There is a difference visible to all, she thinks, between Pathfinder Ryder, and Lia.

She’s almost starting to forget who Lia is.

She goes to leave, mumbling something about needing to go speak with Addison, and even she doesn’t know what she’s just said. Jaal catches her by the arm, a surprisingly forceful move that she would not have expected from the introverted, and soft-spoken Angara. “Ryder,” he says, and the way he pronounces her name sends shivers down her spine. She’s come to hate hearing it. _Ryder. Ryder. Ryder. Pathfinder Ryder, we need you. Ryder, help me? Ryder, save us! Ryder, Ryder, Ryder, Ryder—_ “Remember. You are not alone.” He waits until his message sinks it to follow up with his typical farewell. “Stay strong, and clear.”

Lia does not know how she can stay strong, if she was never strong in the first place.

But that is a thought she keeps to herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it 11:15 am when I'm posting this? Yes.  
> Have I slept at all yet? No.  
> Should I have? Probably.  
> Am I skipping all of my classes before exams?  
> Yes. Am I going to regret that? Oh, absolutely.  
> Am I in love with Lia and Jaal? Hell to the fucking yes.


	3. Auriga

She is certain Voeld would be a beautiful planet if it weren’t so cold. The constant blizzard saps the heat from her bones, and the can hear her teeth chattering, despite being in a climate-controlled Angara shuttle, and wearing her protective suit of armour. Jaal, and the other Angaran Resistance fighters seem to be doing just fine—as does Peebee, she notes, doesn’t seem to be complaining either.

Still, it’s not like Lia’s here because she wants to be. Somewhere within the Kett facility she can see just on the horizon is Moshae Sjefa. She’s too busy thinking about what they will do after they find and rescue the Moshae to think about all the ways this mission can go wrong. She’s come too far. They’ve been working towards this for _weeks_ , and within a few hours, they’ll either have results to show for it, or the entire Initiative is screwed.

She tries not to think about how important this mission is.

Jaal checks something in his display, before casting a look over at the nervous human. His lips curl into a small smile as his grip tightens on his gun. He is preparing himself for this as much as she is. She does not trust many people, but even she has to admit that she’s starting to trust the Angara. It helps that he, and the wild Asari Peebee have become two of her most reliable companions out in the field. If it weren’t for the two of them, she’s certain she would have died.

To think that she’d been reluctant to let Jaal join their ragtag crew.

  _She hadn’t meant to land on Aya, not in this fashion at least. Engine burning up, being chased by someone who appeared to be the Kett leader, and now facing another alien race who seemed wary of outsiders. Although, she supposed if she had the Kett as a neighbour, she’d be wary too._

_Her hands did not shake as she held them above her head, demonstrating that she carried no weapons with her. Hell, she wasn’t even wearing the Initiative-issued clothing. She stared blankly into the opaque glass of the bipedal guards who were scanning her, noting their double-knees, and three fingered hands._

_They ushered her forwards, guns pointed at her back. At least this sort of treatment of hostiles was the same across galaxies, she thought. She still wasn’t certain if they would even be able to communicate. SAM was quickly working on an update to her translator, using snippets of idle dialogue from her guards to try and speed up the process._

_As they continued further, more and more of Aya’s surface became visible. It was a lush, vibrant planet at least, full of brightly coloured flowers as large as trees. The heat of the Onoan’s sun was hot on the nape of her neck. Curious civilians started making their way over, and they are unlike any race from the Milky Way. Large eyes, almond eyes with a black sclera, and irises not unlike a cat’s stared at her, standing out against skin in shades of deep indigo, pale lilac, and a soft magenta. Their faces were framed by a sort of cowl-like feature that seemed to be a part of them, and their noses were flat, nostrils little more than a slit._

_She wasn’t as skilled with her biotics as Scott was, but their mother’s prolonged exposure to eezo when she was pregnant with them had given both twins an upper hand. Scott could tear through buildings if he wanted to with pure, brute force, while Lia had always been able to create shields out of thin air, as well as being highly aware of things not noticeable to most humans. The waves of electro-magnetic energy that seemed to be rolling off of Aya’s people, for example._

_A single, slender figure stands at the top of a set of stairs, her hands clasped before her. Her brow, unlike the others, is decorate with whorls of white paint as though to set her apart from the people around her. “I’m Paaran Shie, governor of Aya. We are the Angara,” she said, SAM seemingly have succeeded in creating a temporary patch for Lia’s translator. She can still hear the Angaran tongue below._

_Lia slowly lowered her hands. “Hello,” she said, not quite certain where else to start. She’d been trained in first contact protocol, and she had no intention of not following it, but it was like all her training escaped her in this monumental. “I’m Lia Ryder. I’m a Pathfinder with the Initative.”_

_The Angara possessed no eyebrows, but if they had, Paaran Shie would have raised one haughtily. “Yes. You crossed darkspace. I’ve heard of your journey.” She sounded less than pleased, but she was given no opportunity to express it for another Angara—a male, given his wider, broader frame, and his sharp features—steps in front of her. The cloak around his shoulders almost seemed to float as he descended the steps separating Paaran Shie from Lia, his purple-pink countenance unreadable. One side of his cowl seemed to have seen battle, missing a chunk, and leaving a knotted scar in its place. “Jaal. I have this in hand.”_

_Jaal holds up a hand, stopping her before she can lay a hand on him. Lia wasn’t certain who this Jaal person was, but by the way Paaran Shie recoiled, she knew he was important. “Evfra,” he said, and his voice was like thunder, low and rumbling, “saw the ship come in, and sent me to find out what’s going on.”_

_“She’s a human,” Paaran Shie explained, as though Lia wasn’t standing right there. As Jaal moved closer, Lia came to realise just how short she was in comparison. She had done her utmost to ensure she didn’t appear like a threat, but Jaal did not seem to care. His lower lip was curled in something akin to disgust. Countless readings in a language she did not know flashed across his eye display. “From another galaxy. A Pathfinder.”_

_Jaal’s crystalline eyes narrowed as they bored into her. The three piercings that decorate his cowl—not entirely unlike the three that looped the upper part of her right ear—flashed in the light, almost blinding her. “Aya is hidden, protected,” he growled. “What do you want?”_

_“I want nothing,” she said, and it wasn’t quite true. She wanted access to the Vault, but she did not yet know how to explain that. “I was searching for Aya, yes, but it was by mere happenstance that we—my crew and I—found it.  I must apologise. I did not plan to land here the way we had—without warning, on fire, unaware of your people…”_

_“That is good to know,” Jaal said, unable to restrain a small smile. “Because if it was, it would be a very bad plan.”_

_She could not help herself. She burst into laughter that she had to muffle in the back of her hand. She wasn’t as open with her emotions as her brother might have been, ever the diplomatic one, but the absurdity of the situation didn’t escape her. She was meeting an entirely new civilization, on a new planet, in a new galaxy. What was it her father had said right before he’d died?_

_These were the moments that made it all worthwhile._

“Do we have any idea of what to expect from this Kett facility?” Ryder asks, turning to Jaal. Already, she’s trying to come up with a plan of attack, despite not know what they are facing. So far, it consisted of two obvious steps:

  1. Save the Moshae
  2. Kill any Kett who stood in their way.



It wasn’t a very good plan.

“No,” the Angara tells her.

“So we’re going in blind,” she sighs, fiddling with the scope on her sniper rifle. Peebee’s on the front line enough for two people, and she would much rather stick back, and pick the Kett off one by one than go in guns blazing. Her father’s helmet rests on the seat beside her, its glass slightly scratched, but not enough to impair her vision. It’s the last thing she has of his, and he had brought it all the way from the Citadel. His N7 armour… It’s a relic now, six hundred years outdated, and the Angara definitely have better armour she could have, but…

She can’t bring herself to let it go.

“No one’s seen the inside of these places?” she says further, trying to coax more words out of the Resistance fighter.

“None who lived to tell,” he says, and his bitter tone almost makes her wish she hadn’t said anything. “Prisoners who go in are never seen again. They’re ‘the disappeared.’”

“Into the belly of the beast, then,” mumbles Ryder, and for a moment she forgets that not everyone understands the idioms she uses. The moment does not last long. The Angara are free and open with their beliefs, emotions, and opinions—though she isn’t certain if this is true, given that Jaal is the one who has told her this, and he’s demonstrated little of all three—and Jaal does not hide his confusion as he stares at her blankly.

“Human idiom?”

“Human idiom. Means where it’s the most dangerous.”

“Ah.”

Peebee cracks her knuckles, and leans back into her seat. She almost looks excited “Ooh, _mysterious_ ,” Peebee almost sings. “No one’s escaped?”

Jaal’s sharp glare is enough of an answer for most, but Commander Heckt must think otherwise. He looks over at the young—well, young by Asari standards, anyway—rogue, adjusting his grip on his assault rifle. “Sure, we’ve liberated Kett work camps, but never these facilities. We lost so many fighters trying. The price was too high, but I hear you, Ryder, are good at doing the impossible.”

She should be honoured, flattered even, but his praise is little more than a painful reminder that she might just be leading these men to their deaths. They are trusting her, almost blindly so, and she isn’t certain if she will be able to look their loved ones in the eyes if they don’t come back home. It’s their job, she tells herself, to put themselves in danger, to stop the Kett so they will not harm innocents. It doesn’t make it easier.

Her shitty plan is starting to worry her now. Luckily for her, she’d spent years learning how to hide her emotions, just so she wouldn’t have to address them with Alec, and no one seems to notice the way her hands are curled into fists.

No one but one.

“Ryder.” She doesn’t think Jaal has ever called her by her first name, but unlike the others, he does not shout it as he calls for help. Instead, he’s quiet, soft, and her furrows his brow ever-so-slight in concern. His concern is all but palpable.

She almost can’t stand it. His consideration, his concern for her is almost obnoxious. She is used to hiding her true thoughts that this feels like nothing short of intrusive. Peebee respects this, rarely commenting on how Ryder is doing unless she appears to be at death’s door.

Ryder pushes her shoulders back as they start making their descent, letting out a breath through gritted teeth. She may not have trained to be Pathfinder, but she’d trained as a recon specialist, and sneaking in behind enemy lines to save an important person… She’s done this before. She knows how to do this.

“Jaal,” Ryder says, settling her father’s helmet onto her shoulders, “you take point once we get through those shields. I’ll cover your back.” She turns back towards the group of Resistance fighters, repressing her doubts deep inside her. “Remember: our main target here is Moshae Sjefa, and if she’s here… We’re not going back empty handed, understood?” Nodded heads all around. “Good. Now let’s get going. Stay safe.”

“But Pathfinder,” an Angaran female, Skaelv, says, “no one joins the Resistance to stay safe.”

“And no one,” Ryder retorts, “fights under my command, and gets themselves hurt, is that clear?” She will _not_ lead these people to their deaths, no matter what it takes. She knows she cannot control such a thing from occurring, but god _damn_ it, she will do her utmost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Low-key makes a plot device out of everyone referring to a non Sara/Scott named Pathfinder as "Pathfinder" or "Ryder" because I'm extra as hell, and not all that subtle. Also, goddammit yes, Lia kept Alec's helmet because as much as she hated her father for being so distant with his family, she still misses him like hell.


	4. Virgo

SAM bypasses the Kett facilities’ shields without much difficulty, the AI residing in her head able to run any and all combinations of passwords to disable the shields in an instant. They’ve barely made it in when they face resistance from the Kett. Two wraiths guard the door, their self-cloaking ability catching them all by surprise, but Ryder picks off one with a clean shot to the head, while Jaal and Peebee manage to kill the other.

They sneak in through the ventilation system, and it’s clear that the Kett do not like the cold of Voeld anymore than she does, for the air tunnels are hot. It is only because of their temperature controlled suits that they do not cook alive. They get the drop on the Kett in the next room, and by the time they can get their weapons out, she’s already picked off three, barely using the scope of her rifle to land her headshots. Slowly, she’s starting to get a feel for things again. Sure, they’re facing a group of radical aliens who want to wipe their races off of the face of the universe, and _sure_ , they’re in another galaxy, but this isn’t all that different from back home in the Milky Way. Well, not _really_ , anyway.

She lands a perfect shot as her jump jets propel her into the air, helping her peek over the crate a Destined has tried to hide behind. His body falls to the floor, limp. “Last one down. Anyone hurt?”

“Yeah,” Peebee says, and for a second Ryder’s heart stops. But then: “ _Emotionally_. Did they really think they’d win against us? I’m insulted.”

Ryder rolls her eyes, and turns her gaze to the holographic display of the Archon in the centre of the room, where the Kett leader is spouting a speech on repeat.

“The Archon,” Jaal murmurs, sidling up alongside Ryder. Some of the Kett’s green-brown blood is splattered across his chest. “I will destroy him for what he has done to the Angara.”

“Hopefully, we will have that chance. Right now, the Moshae is our greatest concern.” Ryder waves for the Resistance fighters to join her. “If we were a surprise, I doubt we’re one anymore. We need to rethink our plan.”

Commander Heckt shakes his head. “No need. You have the best chance of finding Moshae Sjefa. We’ll attack head-on, and provide a distraction.”

“No.” The word escapes her before she even has the time to process Heckt’s words. “That would be suicide.”

“Without meaning offence, Pathfinder,” Skaelv says, softly, “we’re all dead without the Moshae. We knew what we were signing up for when we joined the Resistance.”

She hates that they’re right. They have a much higher chance of success if they part ways, if Heckt and his team can draw fire away from Ryder, Jaal, and Peebee, but how is she supposed to keep them alive if they’re not together? “Go,” she says, after a moment, “and may luck be with you.” She watches, silent, as they leave, the door hissing shut behind their retreating backs.

“They’ll be fine.” Peebee doesn’t sound all that confident in her own words, and it’s clear that she’s only speaking in an attempt to reassure the Pathfinder. All it does is remind them that it is highly likely they will never see Heckt or his men again.

Jaal sounds a little more confident, like he believes what he says. For some reason, Ryder’s racing heart starts to slow. “I am certain that they will keep the Kett occupied. Commander Heckt is a skilled fighter. I am fearful for the Kett who dare to stand in his way.”

_Pathfinder,_ SAM says in her ear, _it seems the program I used to breach the shield could overload, and destroy this facility. However, the pulse would be lethal to Angaran physiology._

“Then why would you suggest it?” Ryder says under her breath. “That’s not a viable option.”

“Let’s call it a last resort,” says Peebee.

“Let us not call it a resort at all.” Jaal checks around the door of the next room, waving Ryder and Peebee forward.

It’s a strange space, unlike the other rooms she’d seen in other Kett-owned facilities. It’s all but empty, aside from the vents along every wall, and the blindingly bright blue lights. The space hums with electricity, more so than usual. Instantly, Ryder gets a suspicion that, perhaps, they shouldn’t be here.

“SAM—” she starts, just as the doors hiss closed. “ _SAM_. What’s going on?”

There is a pause before the artificial intelligence answers. _A decontamination protocol. The chamber is sealed until the cycle runs its course._

She lets out a heavy breath, the glass of her helmet fogging up for a split second before it adjusted to the difference in temperature. She dislikes small spaces, always had. “Can you do anything about this?”

_I’m working on a solution._

They escape the room mere moments before Lia thinks she cannot handle it for a moment longer.

But the next room isn’t all that much better.

It isn’t the Kett that make her stomach churn. She has killed enough of them by this point that they all seem to blur together, and thought that makes killing them easier, she isn’t certain if this is good. The glass pane of her helmet slides away only so she can clap a hand over her mouth.

A statue of the Archon at least twenty metres tall stands in the middle of a great space to which this room looks out to through a large window. It is surrounded by countless pods which all have small windows that glow a soft purple-blue. A dozen Angara stand below the statue of the Archon, flanked on either side by unarmed Kett soldiers. Neither group seems to be making a move, all bowing to a female Kett wearing intricate burgundy robes.

“What?” Jaal says, echoing her own confusion. “What is this?”

A dozen pods open, and though they cannot hear what the female Kett says, all they know is that her words cause the Angara to step forward into the pods where they shut upon them.

“What?” the Angara Resistance fighter continues. “Why aren’t they resisting?”

“I… I don’t know,” Ryder says, her brow furrowed. “They must be in some sort of trace. SAM, get me audio.”

_On it, Pathfinder._

“I know the Moshae. She’s not down there. But maybe… in one of those pods.” Jaal’s nose twitches in what appears to be barely contained anger.

“Then let’s go, and find out,” she replies, just as one of Heckt’s men, Owwin, chimes in over the comms.

_“You wanted a distraction? We just set our plan on fire.”_ An explosion rattles the facility, and soon, she sees Heckt and all his men storm into the space below. A hologram of the Archon flickers into existence. The robed Kett speaks with him for a moment, before sprinting off just as Heckt’s men open fire.

SAM seems to have managed to get the audio from the room, for the hiss of the Kett woman’s words fills the room, voice clear as day. “Archon.”

“Explain!” the Kett leader demands, his eyes narrowing at his subordinate.

The Kett female drops to her knees. “We’ve been breached. I will defend the temple—”

“Wait. Is the Moshae among these?”

“No. It awaits final exaltation.”

“Then proceed immediately, and bring it to me.”

“Final exaltation?” Jaal grabs her by the arm, drawing her attention to him. “What’s that? What are they doing? We have to save all the Angara. Ryder—”

“ _Jaal_ —” She does not mean to sound so cruel, but he recoils at the sharpness of her voice. She cannot help it. She does not like being touched on the best of days, and she’s trying so goddamn hard to keep herself together right now, she’s almost overwhelmed by it all. But it’s not fair for her to take it out on him. He has done nothing wrong, only wanting to see his people saved, and she knows the desperation that comes with that all too well. She has twenty thousand lives all depending on her, and if she doesn’t—if she _can’t_ —find them a home, they will all perish.

Jaal’s people are here, as the Kett’s prisoners, and subjected to their every whims. And he can save them. He needs to, wants to, and she can help him.

“Ryder, _please_.”

She nods, ever-so-slightly. “Of course,” she says, and it sounds like a promise.  “I’ll do everything I can.”

“That wasn’t the plan—” Peebee starts.

“Damn the plan!” Lia snaps back at her, refusing to hear what the Asari has to say. “This isn’t about the plan. Not anymore. We’re saving the Moshae, and we’re saving everyone else while we’re at it, is that understood?”

Peebee has the sense to not argue.

_“Come in, Pathfinder.”_ Commander Heckt’s voice is a welcome distraction from the rising tensions. Ryder can instead turn her omni-tool, pretending to adjust the sound quality of their comm link, rather than face Peebee’s angered gaze.

She’s the Pathfinder here, Ryder tells herself. And Peebee will listen to her orders, whether she wants to or not. There are lives at stake, countless innocent lives, and she will _not_ have their blood on her hands.

Not if she can help it.

“Commander Heckt,” Ryder responds. “Go ahead.”

_“We contacted Commander Do Xeel. More fighters are on their way.”_

“Send scientists, too,” Jaal says. “And technicians. Let’s gather all the intel we can.”

_“Will do.”_

She cannot say that she agrees with Jaal. Their primary concern should be the Moshae, and then the Angara in the pods, but the information gathered from this place _could_ help the Resistance learn how to fight against the Kett. They know so little about their enemies, and with each passing day, they become an even greater danger. Especially now that the Archon seems to have his eyes set upon Ryder, and her ability to manipulate Remnant technology.

She can still taste the acrid smoke of Eos’ vault as its decontamination protocol chased her, Vetra, Cora, and Peebee down. Their escape had been close, and her sensitivity electro-magnetic fields had gone haywire, leaving her hearing static in her ears that had not gone away for hours after. It hadn’t been an altogether pleasant experience. But this ability to use Rem-tech…

Something about it all felt remarkably familiar; the sparks that shot through her veins when her fingertips came in contact with the ancient consoles did not take her by surprise, as though she had experienced it so many times she’d become used to it.

It was all rather strange.

“You holding up alright, Commander?” Ryder asks, peering through the scope of her gun to pick off a stray Kett who has stumbled across their small group.

_“So far. We’re beyond the main chamber now, and continuing our infiltration.”_

_“This place is crazy,”_ Skaelv chimes in.

Ryder lets out a curse as the Kett’s accompanying Wraith spots the intruders, and heads straight for them. A combination of her biotics, and Peebee’s own take the beast down in no time. “Tell me about, it” she mumbles, quiet enough that her microphone doesn’t pick it up. “What are you seeing?”

_“It’s like a… I don’t know,”_ Owwin says, _“a weird… church? It’s so strange.”_

Commander Heckt grunts, and the sound of gunfire can be heard from their side of their link. _“We found a room of prisoners who were entranced or something. Couldn’t convince them to evacuate, so we had to leave them behind.”_

“We’ll try getting everyone out once we find the Moshae,” Ryder says through gritted teeth, preforming a rather haphazard tech job in an attempt to wrap all three of them in a cloaking effect just as a troop of Kett come running around the corner. The effect last just long enough for the three of them to avoid detection before it crumbles.

They manage to knock out a few vents, slipping into the room to which the pods all seem to be leading. It should feel like progress, like they’re one step closer to finding the Moshae, but as SAM disables the shields surrounding the room, Ryder’s heart drops. Above their heads are more pods than she can count, each containing a singular Angara who seems to be resting in a form of stasis.

“How many… pods…?” Jaal breathes out. He cannot hide the fear and the disgust that leak into his low timbre, and his vibrant complexion suddenly seems to lose all colour. He wavers where he stands, leaning onto a pillar for support.

“SAM,” Ryder all but whispers as she approaches a Kett console, “run a scan. I need to know if the Moshae is in here.” The AI does not reply, but her scanner beeps as it is activated. She feels like she’s going to be sick. How long have the Kett been doing this? And for what purpose? The few pods they saw in the main chamber could have been an anomaly, but this seems too purposeful. There’s a reason for this, and she has a nagging suspicion that it will not be pleasant to discover.

_Searching,_ says SAM. _The Chosen are logged by genetic information._

“Hurry.” Jaal’s voice breaks as he speaks. “Please.”

_I am working at top velocity with an alien language, in an alien technology, checking against Angaran databases,_ the AI replies. _The Moshae was here, but her pod was pulled out of line moments ago._

“Uh-oh,” Peebee says under her breath. “Where to?”

_Pods travel from here to rooms that encircle this core._

Ryder does not stop for a moment, instead pushing on forward without another word. Damn it all to hell, with every step that they make, they seem to be taking another two back. They haven’t even found their primary target yet, and now she’s faced with the possibility that Peebee might be right. They may not be able to save all the Angara trapped here, but that doesn’t mean she will not try.

_“Pathfinder, come in_. _”_

“Skaelv?” She’s almost shocked to hear the Angara’s voice. “What is it? Is there a problem?”

_“No. On the contrary. Our reinforcements are arriving. We’re doubling back to rendezvous.”_

Thank God, Ryder thinks. At least something’s going according to plan. “Good. We’re chasing down a lead on the Moshae now. I think she might still be alive. Hope might not be lost after all.”

_“Stars’ strength! That’s good news!”_

“Yeah, I thought we could do with some good news right about now… I’ll keep you updated. Might be radio silence from here on in. We’re getting close.”

_“Understood. Good luck, Pathfinder. Stay strong, and clear.”_

Lia’s breath hitches in her throat as they step into another contamination room, the doors locking behind them. She goes to talk to SAM about overriding the controls, but Peebee tackles her to the ground, hand clapped over her mouth. It almost makes the situation worse—small, confined spaces, and now being pinned to the floor by an Asari. Had they been anywhere else, she would have made a quip about Peebee making a common occurrence of tackling her, but goddammit, she can’t think straight. It’s like the walls are closing in around her, and she feels like she can’t breathe, and—

Peebee presses a finger to her lips, and slowly gets off Ryder, pointing to the window where another robed Kett, this time sporting green robes rather than burgundy, stands on the other side of the glass, her back turned to them. “Guys…? I think we’re on the right track.”

She swallows, hard, trying to ignore the situation in which they’ve found themselves… again. “SAM, can you do anything about this yet?”

_Working on it_.

“Ryder.” Jaal seems to notice the rapid rise and fall of the Pathfinder’s chest as she struggles to keep her composure. “ _Breathe._ ”

She is about to snap at him for the foolish advice—as though she hadn’t considered breathing, as though she wasn’t on the verge of hyperventilating—but through the window, she catches a glimpse of a pod lowering from the ceiling. The robed Kett hovers in the air, manipulating gravity so she stands level with the pod just as it opens. She holds two strange devices in either hand, each ending with a thin sliver of metal—a needle.

The pod opens, revealing a male Angara. His eyes flutter open, and before he can exclaim in fear, the Kett plunges the needles into either side of the Angara’s cowl. He lets out a howl of agony that can be heard even through the glass, and Ryder is paralyzed as she watches, transfixed in horror. The Angara’s veins turn black, and soon his entire skin seems to be covered in obsidian oil. Jaal presses himself against the window as every bone in the Angara’s body seems to break, and reform as he is suspended in the air. He falls to the ground a moment later, and the black slick fades away, revealing an all too familiar sight.

Ryder isn’t a particularly religious person, but a small prayer falls from her lips. She cannot believe what she is seeing for where the Angara had stood a moment earlier, is a Kett, tall and proud. She cannot stop Jaal from storming into the room the instant SAM manages to unlock the doors.

He lets out a fearsome cry, landing several shots on the robed Kett before anyone realises he’s burst into the room. “No! Wait!” he yells as Ryder manipulates her biotics to land a strike on the Angara-turned-Kett as he fires upon her. “Save the Angara! Be careful! Don’t kill him!”

“Are you _kidding_ me?” she shoots back in reply. “If I don’t shoot him, he’s going to kill us!”

“Hey, Jaal?” Peebee says, distracting their companion for a split second as she raises her pistol. “I’m sorry.”

“Peebee, no!” Jaal nearly tackles her as she fires, but he’s a moment too late. Her shot lands square between the Angara-turned-Kett’s eyes, and he falls to the ground, lifeless.

The Asari pushes him off of her, killing a Kett that had tried to sneak up behind Jaal. “I had no choice! We’ll make these bastards pay, I promise!”

But then, just like that, the fighting’s over, and there’s no sense of victory, for now they understand who it is they’ve been really fighting all along. This is why the Kett capture the Angara—to warp and twist them into facsimiles of their former selves.

Jaal kneels over the body of his fallen brother, his shaking hands pressed to his lips. Lia has seen some terrible things, but nothing— _nothing_ —compares to this. She does not know what to do. The pretence of confidence escapes her, and the façade that is Pathfinder _fucking_ Ryder slips away. Something within her hurts, aches like a festering wound whose agony she’s endured for so long she’s become accustomed to it. Lia cannot stop her hand from reaching out to grab his shoulder.

“Jaal…”

“They… are us.” Jaal sounds hollow, broken, and for good reason. She cannot imagine what it is that he is going through. Finally, he breaks. The Angara cry as the humans do, and tears flow freely down his face. He does not attempt to wipe them away. His breath comes in shuddering gasps that wrack his entire body.

Peebee steps forward. “The Moshae—” she starts, but falls silent as Lia shakes her head. She understands. “I’ll… I’ll continue on ahead. Keep scanning. It looks like there are other rooms like this. Maybe… maybe she’s still alive.” _Maybe they haven’t made her into one of them_.

Lia doesn’t have the energy to bid her goodbye as the rogue slips off by herself, the Asari fiddling with the safety of her pistol just to give her something to do. She’s just as bad with emotions as Ryder is. Unlike Ryder, however, she runs away.

She bottles it up inside, until it festers, and threatens to consume her whole.

“They’re us,” Jaal says, brokenly, as Lia drops to her knees beside him. “How many have I killed, not knowing? Ryder, I did not know.”

“This isn’t your fault, Jaal.”

“I cannot help but feel that it is. I should’ve… I should have known.”

“No.” Her commanding tone leaves no room for arguments. “Jaal, you cannot blame yourself. Whatever it is that the Kett are doing, it _changes_ them. You saw. They aren’t the same people they were before, not after whatever it is that they do. But we can stop them—stop them from doing this to anyone else.” She reaches over, and takes one of his hands in her own, her five slender fingers gripping onto his larger three. “You aren’t alone in this. Whatever you want, whatever you need… just give me the word.” Then, a pause as she struggles to recall the words he spoke to her. “Remember: you are not alone.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost done the "saving the Moshae" quest, and we'll get back into more original content, 'cause most of _Light_ isn't about the actual mission, more so about Jaal/Lia, but this mission is rather integral to the whole "getting to trust each other" stage of a relationship so...


	5. Draco

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ryder finds that certain actions are inexcusable, and in which Lia finds that perhaps she isn't as forgiving as she thought.

Ryder has lost all of her patience.

She has killed more Kett than she can count as they made their way through the facility, and she has just discovered that some—if not all—of the Kett are the very people she had been trying to save. And she is _this_ close to fighting the next Kett that dares to try to stop her with her bare fists, if only to get some of her anger out.

She steps out onto the landing bay, chest heaving as she tries to catch her breath from chasing the burgundy robed Kett carrying the Moshae’s limp form. The revelation of what the Kett had been doing the Angara had been enough of a loss, and she refuses to lose the Moshae too. She raises her assault rifle to the sky, firing once, twice, thrice in warning.

The robed Kett stops where she stands, the Moshae starting to stir in her arms. The Angaran scholar blinks drearily, rubbing at her eyes, but the Kett priestess—as Ryder has come to realise who and what the Kett is, comparing the Kett to the cardinals of the Catholic church back on Earth—pays the Angara no heed.

“ _Hey!_ ” A sudden, overwhelming wave of confidence spurs Ryder on as she marches forward, her gun at the ready. The Cardinal hesitates before she turns around, her lips contorting into a sneer. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Pathfinder,” the Kett hisses. “I suspected you were behind this.”

“Good to see I’m already making a reputation for myself in another galaxy.” She points her gun at the Cardinal’s head, certain that her aim is true. “Give us the Moshae.”

“I’d sooner die.” The Cardinal casts a shield around both herself, and the Moshae just as Ryder fires, and the shot which would have struck her just below her left eye fizzles out. “Kill her, and bring me her head!”

But the Cardinal underestimates the anger that simmers within Ryder’s heart. What was supposed to be a simple extraction has turned into something greater, something more personal. They have done something inexcusable, turning brother against brother, sister against sister. How many parents have killed their own children, seeing only the monsters the Kett have made them into being? How many of the Disappeared lie forgotten on empty battlefields, unrecognisable, and left to rot? The Kett have not just ruined the lives of the Angara they have transformed, but the lives they have left behind to pray, not knowing that hope has long since been lost.

She cannot be matched, missing only but a few of her shots. The edges of her vision are tinted red, and the Kett hardly have a chance to land more than a couple of shots on her before they are struck down. Not that their shots land. She does not fight with brute force, it’s never been her style, but her years as a trained sniper, as well as tech specialist has trained her how to exploit her enemies’ weaknesses. She manipulates their shields to create her own, and the instant her shield falls, she pulls it back into existence by destroying the shield of one of her foes.

When a Kett gets too close for comfort, she seems to disappear into thin air, using the cloaking technology their Destined have used against her on many occasion, but her cloak is better than theirs. She had spent years adjusting it, fiddling with it until it is damn near perfect, lacking the trademark shimmer in the air the Kett’s cloaking technology has. Then, she sheds her cloak, ramming a white-hot blade from her omni-tool through their exposed throats.

There isn’t a single piece of armour that she wears that isn’t stained with Kett blood.

She may be young, but everything Alec knew, he taught her children, and an individual possessing any amount of N7 training is dangerous.

And a Ryder, when angry, is like a goddamn force of nature, something that dares to be reckoned, lest they obliterate anything that stands in their way.

Ryder lets out a feral growl as she steps out of shadows, grabbing the Cardinal by her neck, and pinning her to a nearby wall. She bares her teeth, her brown eyes meeting the terrified muddy green of the Cardinal’s. “I think you underestimated me.”

She tosses the Kett aside with a casual indifference, jerking her head at Peebee in a silent instruction for the Asari to watch her. Ryder drops to her side as the Moshae wakes from the trace she’d been put under, propping herself up onto her elbows. Instantly, Jaal pulls her into an embrace. They only part as Ryder clears her throat.

The Moshae recoils as the human approaches her, and in her anger, Ryder had almost forgotten that many of the Angara had yet to have contact with the humans. She has been surrounded by Angara for weeks, and already they feel like just another group of ordinary people coming from a different background, but for a woman who’s been with hostile aliens for God knows how long…

“I’m Ryder,” she says. “Pathfinder Ryder. I’m going to get you out of here.”

The Moshae’s gaze drifts to Jaal, and he gives her a nod—an assurance that they can trust her, that she really is here to help.

But the Moshae does not seem grateful. Instead, she lets out a low, and hollow laugh, her voice raspy. “Out of here?” she repeats, and her accent is lilting, quite similar to Jaal’s. “No one has ever returned from behind Kett walls. It is impossible.”

Jaal’s laugh, on the other hand, is considerably more amused.

“What is it?” the Moshae asks.

“I think you will find that Ryder is rather talented at doing the impossible.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say _talented_ ,” Lia mumbles, and a blush creeps up the back of her neck as she helps the Moshae to her feet. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

“I’m not… I’m not the only one here. They took the entire cell,” Moshae Sjefa says as Jaal utilises his omni-tool to scan her from head to toe.

“Vitals are bad,” he says, reading the results. “Her immune system’s been decimated.”

“Likely how they ‘exalt’ them. Inject a virus into their systems that transforms them…” The very thought makes her want to be sick, her stomach churning with disgust. “We have to get her away from this. Can you radio the shuttle—”

The Cardinal makes a swing at Peebee, her bony fist colliding with the Asari’s nose. As Peebee recoils in pain, the Cardinal darts forward, making a move towards the Moshae. “You will not take it! It is meant for the Archon himself!” In her hand, she summons an orb of crackling bioelectricity that makes the hairs on Ryder’s arms rise, her biotics responding the electricity.

But Peebee is strong than she looks, and recovers from the Cardinal’s blow within seconds. She points her gun at the Cardinal’s head. “Go ahead. I dare you,” she taunts.

The Cardinal hesitates, and has the common sense to dissipate her electrical charge.

“I do not care what the Archon wants,” Ryder says, her voice low, and controlled. “She’s coming with us. Your Archon is an idiotic fool who has had his way for too long. Not anymore.”

“You arrogant _simpletons_ ,” the Cardinal seethes. “This is a gift! Who are you to deny it?”

 “A gift?” Ryder steps forward, leaving Jaal to support the Moshae, but she cannot help herself. A wave of fury washes over her. “ _A gift?_ You turn them against their own people! Make them into monsters who fight and kill their own people! They are nothing more than dispensable soldiers, are they? You do not care whose lives you take, whose hearts you break, as long as you please your damned Archon.”

“We are exalting them—”

“You are killing them!” Ryder shouts with enough ferocity the Cardinal flinches. “They may yet live, but you corrupt them beyond recognition, and with that, you kill them! They are not the people they were before, and when they die, they are not even granted a respectful death. Their loved ones will forever view them as a monsters, one of those who took the person they loved from them, even if they are in fact right in front of them. This is not a gift, and it will _never_ be a gift.”

“These Chosen join with us to become great beyond your ability to understand.”

“And what,” Ryder has gone quiet, and somehow, it’s more intimidating than her loud, fiery anger, “happens to the people left behind? What happened to the people _you_ left behind?”

Her questions make the Archon falter, they are something she had not considered before, but she responds with a level of self-righteousness that makes Ryder’s lower lip curl in disgust. “They wait, as they too will one day be exalted. Like them, I was once wretched, and the exalted DNA of our great Archon entwines with mine. I stand on the shoulders of his greatness. As they do. As, one day, you will.”

“I have crossed darkspace, spending six hundred years in stasis to come this far. I have lost my entire family, two since I arrived here, and yet I still stand. I carry with me the hopes and dreams of twenty thousand lives who all depend on me. I bear the burden of Pathfinder, alone, and I have shaped an entire planet to suit my needs on a whim, just to find my people a home.” Ryder pushes her shoulders back, narrowing her eyes. “I do not need you to make me great. I have done a sufficient enough job myself.”

Her words shock the Cardinal into silence. Before her stands what she would consider to be little more than an annoying human, yet another thing the Kett must learn how to exalt, but Ryder has done the impossible countless times over.

And she will not be intimidated by the Kett who stands before her.

 _Pathfinder,_ SAM interrupts, _I am tracking multiple inbound Kett cruisers._

The Cardinal overhears the AI speak, and slowly, she smiles. “You will all be exalted.”

She doesn’t deign the Kett with a response. “SAM, I need a solution. Something. Anything.”

_I’ve accessed the EM field. I can overload at your command._

“You _promised_ you’d get our people out.” Jaal, from what she has seen of him in the past few weeks, is not one to anger easily. The vehemence with which he spits his words takes her by surprise, for this very reason. Behind this anger, however, is a bitter sadness. _She won’t betray me,_ his blue eyes seem to say. _She can’t._

And he’s right, because she has no intention of breaking her promise.

“There’s no _time_ to open hundreds of pods, let alone help the Angara inside!” Peebee counters.

“Then we’ll _make_ time.” She won’t take no for an answer. Not when there are so many lives at stake.

“Wait.” The Cardinal sounds desperate, and not just because Peebee’s gun is still pointed at her head. “Leave my sacred temple intact, and I will open the pods of the Chosen. Take them—just leave this holy place standing.”

“No!” The Moshae is quick to disagree, forcibly pushing Jaal away so she can walk to Ryder on her own two feet without any support. “Even if I die here, this place _must_ be destroyed.”

“We can come back to destroy it,” Jaal says. “Let’s free these here now.”

“If your plan fails, the Kett will simply fill this place again!”

“With respect,” Jaal says, sounding anything but respectful, “our compatriots are also here. Our fighters. Our scientists. _Our strength._ ”

They all turn to her—Peebe, Jaal, the Moshae, and the Cardinal—awaiting her final decision. She is the Pathfinder, after all. The one in charge of this operation. Her word is law, whether they like it or not.

But she’s already made the decision.

She feels the urge to retch as she turns to the Cardinal. “Very well. Have your temple. Release the Angara.”

Relief washes over the Kett’s countenance as she raises her tablet, activating a voice command. “Enact emergency shutdown. Release all the Chosen.”

Ryder tries to pretend that the Moshae isn’t right, like saving the Angara now is pointless for the Kett will simply fill the facility back up, but somewhere deep down inside… What the Moshae says is true, but Ryder cannot say that she cares. They will come back, and destroy the facility at a later date, she swears so on her mother’s grave. “Jaal, have the Resistance free as many as they can before the Kett arrive.”

“I will,” he says, bowing his head. He grabs her forearm as he passes in a strange form of a handshake. “Thank you, Ryder.”

“I thank you too,” the Cardinal says, as though Ryder wants, or needs her gratitude. “I see you begin to understand the gift that the Kett bring to all Andromeda.”

“I told you it wasn’t a damn gift,” Ryder says through gritted teeth, firing her rifle without looking at the Cardinal. Her body falls to the floor, her bony exoskeleton causing the metal to vibrate upon impact. She should feel guilty about killing a defenceless, unarmed person, but she couldn’t let her escape. Not knowing that she’d simply regroup, and try to exalt even more Angara to make up for her losses.

Moshae Sjefa sneers at the Cardinal’s body. “That was too kind. She should have suffered for what she did to my people. She deserved much worse.”

“I did not do that to make her suffer,” Ryder says, quietly. “I did that to stop her.”

“Hmph. Perhaps you ought to have done both then,” the Moshae says, pushing past her.

They almost don’t make it out alive. The Kett reinforcements arrive sooner than anticipated, and they beeline straight for their Cardinal in order to save her from the Resistance. Upon finding her corpse, however, the Cardinal’s rescue group turns their attention to their small crew of people. Waves after waves of Kett keep coming, no matter how many they kill, and Ryder’s quickly running out of ammo. They’ve all been shot at least once, and if the Kett keep sending their hulking Fiends after them, they will not survive long enough to join Commander Heckt on his shuttle.

It is by some miracle that they do.

Ryder provides cover fire as Jaal escorts the weak Moshae onto the shuttle, only joining when everyone else is aboard. If anyone has to be left behind, let it be her. This was her idea, to save the Moshae, and if someone is to suffer, it will be her.

She cries out as her shields drop for a split second, and a Kett lands a shot to her side. She presses her hand to the wound, trying to staunch the blood as she fires back, killing the Kett who hurt her with two pulls of her trigger.

“ _Ryder!_ ” Jaal calls out as he watches her stumble. He leaps from the shuttle, firing nonstop until she’s sitting next to Peebee, going dizzy from blood loss. “You’ve been shot.”

“Yeah.” Lia grimaces as Jaal peels her hand away to examine her wound. “I noticed. Tell me: is it bad?”

His silence more than enough of an answer. “Relax. You’ve exerted yourself more than enough.”

 _Pathfinder. Your vital signals are rapidly dropping. By my calculations, if you do not receive medical attention immediately, you will die from blood loss within ten minutes,_ SAM chimes in.

Admittedly, she’s having a difficult time keeping her eyes open.

“Stars, Ryder,” Jaal says, pressing hard on her wound. The jolt of pain brings her back to reality, but he maintains pressure to try to lessen the damage. “Stay with me. Breathe, Ryder. Breathe. Just brea—”

_“Mom?” Lia never received vid calls from her mother. Ellen would much rather have shown up wherever Lia was stationed at the moment, and see her daughter in person, work be damned. Which, considering the importance of Ellen Ryder’s work, wasn’t always a good thing._

_Ellen had made significant contributions to the development of biotics in humans, helping terrified young people harness the powers they had been given. Young people such as her twin children. Exposure to large quantities of eezo in vitro was what often lead to biotics in humans, and Ellen’s job studying eezo in order to understand it better had required her to spend nearly every waking hour around it. Scott was a perfect example of a biotic human. Lia had seen him punch through a solid brick wall when angered._

_Still, if Ellen was calling her, that meant this news couldn’t wait, and judging by her solemn expression, it wasn’t anything good._

_“Mom?” she repeated, leaning closer towards her mother’s image on the screen before her. “What’s wrong?”_

_Ellen did not look up from her hands, her blue eyes lowered. “You know I love you, right, Lia?”_

_“You’re scaring me.”_

_“Answer the question.” Ellen’s voice cracked, and she sniffed into the back of one of her wrists. “Lia, please.”_

_“Of course I know.” Unlike her husband, Ellen freely demonstrated her affections for her children. She spoke to them at every opportunity, even catching a ride to wherever they were in the galaxy, just to wish them both a happy birthday. Lia couldn’t remember the last time her father wished her a happy birthday. “Now will you tell me what’s wrong?”_

_Ellen let out a breath, burying her face in her hands, and when she looks up, tear tracks are clearly visible on her cheeks. “I’m dying, Lia,” she whispered. “I… I don’t have that much long left. They say a year, maybe two at most.”_

_Lia leaned back in her chair, shocked into silence. She didn’t know what to say. What even was there to say? “Why?” she asked, her eyes closing as she ran a hand over her face._

_“Cancer.” Ellen laughed, bitterly, angrily. “From the eezo. Your father warned me. I’m… I’m sorry.”_

_“Why are you sorry?” Her eyes shot open, only so she could glare at her mother. “You haven’t done anything.”_

_“I feel as though I’ve failed you. Leaving you and Scott behind—”_

_“Don’t say that. There’s still time. Maybe… maybe we’ll find a cure. We don’t know. Each day, we uncover more and more about the Protheans, and with it comes a scientific discovery. Perhaps the Asari, or the Krogan, or the Turians will have a cure—”_

_“Don’t be ridiculous,” Ellen snapped. She regretted her tone in an instant, her voice softening as she continues. “I’m sorry, Lia. It’s just too late.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leave a comment if you enjoyed, or if you're eagerly awaiting more Jaal/Lia scenes like I am :D


	6. Circinus

 “Easy, now.” Lexi T’Perro is the Tempest’s resident doctor, and quite frankly, one of the most stubborn people Lia’s ever met. The Asari doctor presses a hand on Lia’s shoulder as she tries to sit up, forcing the Pathfinder to slow. “Seems as though you’re recovering quickly enough.”

Lia grimaces as she sucks in a breath of fresh air, her side feeling like it is on fire. “I didn’t even realise I’d passed out,” she says.

“You’re lucky Jaal was there.” The Asari holds out a hand, helping Lia off of the bed in her quarters on the Tempest. “Managed to keep you alive long enough for me to get to you. I… did my best. It’ll likely scar. It was pretty bad, although you could always get the scar removed after it’s all healed…” Curiously, Lia peels up her Initiative-issue shirt to examine her wound. Sure enough, a horizontal line, bright pink and inflamed, runs across her side, just under her last rib. “Bullet went straight through you.”

“Yeah.” Lia rolls her shirt back down. “Seems like it.”

“Truth be told, a wound such as that… You should have died.”

“Seems like not dying is an uncanny talent of mine,” she mumbles, and Lexi’s cold countenance softens ever-so-slightly as she recalls what happened to her father. Lexi hadn’t known Alec, but that did not mean his death hadn’t affected everyone. After all, they’d lost a Pathfinder that day, and gained another, less experienced one in return. “You’re not going to clear me for duty, are you?”

“Not for a couple of days. I don’t think I’ll be able to stop you for more than a week. It’ll take that long before you go out on another mission again, anyway.”

At least she recognises that fighting Lia on this is a losing battle, she thinks. “This… This isn’t the med-bay. Why are we in my room?”

“Once you were stable, I transferred you here. Well, actually, Gil and I did. Cora’s been in and out of the med-bay asking the Moshae questions, and with her compromised immune systems, she needs to be hooked up to the Tempest at all times. I hope you don’t mind. I thought you’d appreciate the privacy as you recover.”

“Yeah, it was a… good idea. Thank you, Lexi.”

The Asari dips her head. “I’ll leave you to it, Ryder. Have SAM contact me if you need anything, and… let me know if anything about your injury changes. I don’t want to find out you’ve reopened it, and didn’t tell me. And if the pain becomes unmanageable… let me know? I left medication on your nightsnad, if you need or want it.”

Lia grabs her leather jacket from her chair, shrugging it on before she sits back down on her bed, leaning against the headboard. “Of course. Can’t have another Pathfinder dying on you, right?”

“Very funny, Ryder,” Lexi says, rolling her eyes as she goes to leave.

“Oh! Before you go,” Lia calls after her, “could you send Jaal in, if you see him?”

Lexi laughs, as though she knows something the Pathfinder does not. “Of course.”

She ducks her head in response, chuckling, but the instant she is out of the room, she loses all amusement. Lia has no reason to lie if she has no audience, and she doubles over, her fists clenched in pain. She has been shot before, but god _damn_ it, this hurts like hell. With shaking hands, she reaches over to her nightstand, swallowing several of the pills dry. She is not one to lie to doctors, but if Lexi knew just how much agony the Pathfinder is in, Lia knows she wouldn’t be approved for duty for at least three weeks.

Which isn’t acceptable, at all.

“Ryder.” Jaal greets her with a familiar smile, but his gaze is glassy, empty, like the life has been drained from him. She isn’t altogether surprised. What they discovered on Voeld even makes her sick to her stomach. “I see that you are recovering.”

Lia grimaces as she gets to her feet, and Jaal is by her side helping her stand in an instant. “Yes. Lexi is rather talented,” she says, gritting her teeth through the pain.

“Perhaps you ought to sit down,” Jaal murmurs, guiding her to her sofa where he forces her to take a seat, despite her sputtering insistence that she really is fine. “Ryder, you are a remarkable woman, but you are not indestructible.”

“I don’t know.” She groans as she relaxes into the cushions of the sofa, because dammit he’s right, and she really should sit down. “With the amount of times I’ve almost died, and I haven’t, I think I might be immortal.”

Her remark earns an amused snort from Jaal. “Let us not test that theory, yes?” He pauses, tilting his head to the side as he examines her. “You wished to speak to me?”

“I… uh… yes.” She’s never been particularly good at emotional discussions, but this is something that needs to be discussed. “After what happened on Voeld, I just wanted to… see how you were doing.”

Whatever it was that Jaal was expecting her to say, it doesn’t seem to be this. His brow furrows, and he blinks his aquamarine eyes once, twice, thrice. It’s almost as though this conversation is impossible to comprehend, and she can’t say she doesn’t understand why. She is just as guilty as her father was when it comes to being a distant, impersonal leader.

“You seem surprised,” Lia says.

“I… admit I thought you asked me here to discuss the Moshae, to ask her about the Vault.”

“Nothing against the Moshae, but she and the Vault are the furthest thing from my mind right about now.” Lia fiddles with the zipper of her jacket absentmindedly. “The Kett, their ‘exaltation,’ I… know I’m not always the most emotionally supportive person, but—”

Jaal lowers his gaze to his lap, but his hand finds forearm, giving her a reassuring squeeze. “Thank you for checking, but you don’t need to concern yourself with me. I am… alright.”

She doesn’t believe him. He is, quite f rankly, one of the worst liars she’s ever met, and that’s saying something when Scott can’t even lie about his name to save his life. “I may not need to, but that doesn’t mean I do not want to.”

“I am not worthy of your—”

“Don’t you dare finish that sentence,” she snaps. For some reason, thought of Jaal being undeserving of her concern makes white-hot anger flare somewhere deep inside of her chest. “You are worthy of it, and right, now I think you need it more than anyone else on board. So tell me with a straight face, and if you lie to me, so help me _God_ …” She blows out a heavy breath, her side aching but she pays it no heed. She knows what his answer is going to be anyway. “Are you really alright?”

  _No_. “I have to be,” Jaal says instead, avoiding the truth, but it’s clear enough in his resigned tone. “How else do we go on?”

“We can be ‘not alright,’ and still go on.” Lia knows what that’s like all too well. She’s been on the verge of breaking ever since her father died, but that hasn’t stopped her from continuing on like nothing’s happened. “Remember,” she breathes, “you are not alone.”

“I…” The lighter parts of Jaal’s fuchsia complexion darken with colour. Is he blushing? He must be. “Using my own words against me… Twice now.” He lets out a quiet laugh. “You are… kind. Too kind. To know you, and to have your company is a blessing, Lia.”

This is the first time he has referred to her as anything other than “Pathfinder” or “Ryder,” and it doesn’t seem to escape either of them. Immediately, Jaal turns his gaze elsewhere, focusing instead on the stars just outside her window, and even she’s stammering, not quite certain how to respond. It shouldn’t feel so intimate, yet it does, because dammit, there isn’t a single person on this ship that refers to her by her given name. She was almost starting to think they simply didn’t know it, but now…

“Forgive my impropriety.” Jaal goes to leave, deciding that the best course of action is perhaps avoiding her altogether, rather than facing the boundary he has accidentally crossed.

But he’s right. In this room, right now, she is not the Pathfinder, not Ryder. She is Lia, and dammit, she doesn’t intend on letting him go that easily. She pushes herself to her feet a little too quickly, and the sharp pain that pulses through her side almost makes her head spin, but she manages to catch him by the hand, and then… Then the pain doesn’t matter.

“Stay?” She speaks as though the singular word is a question, giving him an opportunity to cut and run, giving him an opportunity to say no. Perhaps it is the desperation in her tone that she cannot mask which sways him, or perhaps he realises that she’s in too fragile of a state to be left alone, or perhaps it’s something else together, but…

He stays.

“I apologise,” he says, still refusing to meet her gaze. He does not pull his hand out of her grasp. “I understand how humans are with titles. I did not mean any offence—”

“Lia’s fine.”

Her response takes them both by surprise. It comes out of left field, out of nowhere. She has done nothing but observe Initiative protocol ever since she got here—with the exception of her blatant dislike of both Addison and Tann—and now, she’s tossing it all aside without a second thought.

“Lia,” he repeats, tasting the name on his tongue. He cannot quite pronounce it properly, drawing the A out longer. _Leeahh, Leeahh, Leeahh._ “Thank you. Things are just as difficult for you, as they are for me, yet you remain… gentle. Soft. Kind. Frightening at times, but kind all the same. Back on Voeld, I thought for a second you’d tear the facility down with your bare hands. Beautiful, yet terrifying.”

She finds herself blushing, and prays that he does not notice. “Sometimes I forget who I was before I was Pathfinder Ryder,” she admits.

“Hold on to who you are,” he says. “Do not forget. Duty does not always have to come first.”

“It has to when there’s thousands of lives at stake.”

“And what will your people do when they wake to find that their Pathfinder has been replaced by a woman they do not recognise?” he asks. “It is… a great sorrow to be twisted by others into something else, but it is an even greater sorrow to do it to oneself.”

His comment about the Angara’s exaltation makes her fall silent long enough for her to collect her thoughts. “It would be easier, I think, if Dad and Scott were here.”

“I agree. The Angara believe that family makes us stronger. I really miss my family at times like these.”

“I thought it was bad enough missing one mother, but missing five…”

“I do not think the way you miss your mother compares to how I miss mine,” Jaal murmurs, reminding her that, at the end of the day, he can still go home to see his loved ones. People are waiting at home for him. Can she say the same?

She lowers her gaze, tears pricking at the corner of her eyes. “This was supposed to be a fresh start. If I’d known I’d be crossing darkspace for this… Millions of light years from home, and I am more alone than I’ve ever been. I could not be happier that we’ve got the Tempest; we’re making our own little family, I think.”

“Yeah.” Jaal toys with the edge of his _rofjiin_ , curling the blue fabric around a finger. “I’ve never really felt I had a purpose—but here, I do. You have a remarkable talent of making people feel… important. Integral. Wanted.”

“And what of the Resistance?”

“My place in the Resistance is… not what I’d like.”

“Got your gaze set on a bigger prize, do you?”

“Something like that,” he answers with a wry smile. “I have never been more certain that I made the right decision, joining you, despite what Evra says. You crossed darkspace not just to start over, but because you had hope. You believed in what humanity could accomplish. Your resilience is beyond compare, as is your motivation to do right by the people who look up to you. You… you are going to do something important, Lia. I feel it, and I want to be with you. When it do it, I mean.” He coughs awkwardly, rubbing at the back of his head. “This is where I should be.”

“Trust me,” Lia says, “I enjoy your company just as much you seem to enjoy having me around. Having you around is… pleasant.”

 “Yes, we fight well together, do we not?”

“I… Well, yes, but that wasn’t what I was—”

“Are you meaning to say you do not value my skill, and knowledge?”

“No! I do! Of course!” she stammers, before realising that he’s teasing her. She swats his side. “Bastard.”

“I thought you might appreciate that. You are rarely so… happy. I mean it, Lia. You are fascinating. And special. And strange. And terrifying.”

“You certainly know how to charm a woman.”

“I mean it.”

“I didn’t say you didn’t,” she says. “You make it seem like…” _Like we’ve found home. Like everything will be fine, as long as you’re fighting alongside me._ “Like there’s hope after all.”

“That is because there is still hope.” He takes her hand between both of his own. “And it lives in you.”


	7. Leo

Lia’s second visit to Aya is significantly more pleasant than the first. The Angara do not look upon her with trepidation, or with fear, or with disgust, rather… awe. She walks alongside the Moshae, after all, a woman even their bravest warriors had thought beyond saving. This stranger, this alien has done the impossible, done what no one else could, and has thus proven that—unlike the Kett—her intentions are pure. The Kett had bribed them with gifts, lulling them into a false sense of security before turning upon their hosts, but this human…

Her actions spoke louder than anything else could.

She’s not quite certain how to handle it. In Lia’s eyes, she had still much yet to do before she is someone to be respected. Besides, she didn’t save the Moshae and all the Angara trapped in the Kett facility to be respected. That was never what this had been about. God only knew how humanity had a tendency for empty gestures in order to earn the respect of another race. She had done what she could because it was the right thing to do. There had been other ways of getting into Aya’s vault, certainly, but how could she have left countless to die in order to save her people?

_“You are a train worker. There’s a train coming a track.” The Salarian Andromeda Initiative recruitment officer does not lower his gaze, keeping his large eyes fixed on hers eyes as he prattles off another rehearsed question. “The train’s brakes are broken, but the track diverges. On one side, there are three important politicians. On the other, a single civilian. Which way should the train go?”_

_“Can I stop the train?”_

_“No. At least one person has to die. The train will only stop when at least one person is dead.”_

_“Talk about a blood thirsty train.”_

_“Please answer the question. Do you let the three important politicians die to save the civilian, or do you save the three politicians, but let the civilian die?”_

_Lia drummed her fingers on the armrest of her chair, turning over the question in her mind before responding confidently: “Neither. I jump in front of the train.”_

_The Salarian dropped his pen. “That’s not—that’s not allowed.”_

_“You said at least one person had to die. You didn’t say it couldn’t be me.”_

_“Why? Why would you do that?”_

_“Because,” Lia leaned forward onto the Salarian’s desk with a self-assuredness that made him shrink back, “it’s my responsibility to save as many as possible, my own safety and health be damned, and I’d rather be dead than have innocent lives on my hands. Next question.”_

She holds her head high as they come to a stop before the ambassador of Aya, and Evra by the stairs leading the Resistance headquarters. Whatever doubts either of the Angaran leaders might have had before, it’s clear that they are unfounded. The results of her success stand by her side—though the Moshae has made her displeasure regarding Ryder’s refusal to destroy the facility to save the innocents inside—and neither of them can argue that this is nothing short of a victory for them all.

“Ambassador,” Lia says, dipping into a bow. Then, turning her gaze to the Resistance leader, giving him a sharp nod. “Evra.”

“Pathfinder Ryder,” Evra says, his voice as low and gravelly as ever, but even he cannot hide the unmistakable pleasure regarding her success that leaks into his voice. “Moshae Sjefa. Jaal.”

“By the Stars, Evra,” Paaran Shie says with a roll of her eyes. “Always so serious. This is a momentous day. Our Moshae has been returned to us!”

The Moshae doesn’t seem as pleased as the crowd that erupts into cheers around her. “At what cost?” Lia hears her mumble.

She doesn’t have the care, nor the energy, to pay her any heed. The Moshae doesn’t need to know that the Initiative is already making plans to destroy the Kett facility before it can be filled with more innocent Angara. That is something to discuss with Evra later, Lia thinks. The Moshae makes a speech that falls on Lia’s deaf ears, but from the snippets she catches, it’s some grandiose statement about the friends they have made in the Initiative. Lia knows she doesn’t believe a word of what she’s saying, too angry with Ryder’s actions to really condone what the Initiative has done. She hopes that the Moshae will forgive her, in her own time.

There are important things to be doing, and Lia knows this, but she has no will to protest as the people of Aya start pouring drinks, toasting to their shared success. An Angaran historian passes her by, talking loudly with her companion about how this is certain to go down in history, and how pleased she is to have been here for it.  Lia knew when she left the Initiative’s human headquarters on Earth for Ark Hyperion that she would be a part of history, but this isn’t how she’d imagined it. She’d expected to be a part of something larger than herself.

She hadn’t expected to be somebody people named things after.

“I think this is the happiest I have seen my people in a while.”

Lia turns, flashing Jaal a polite smile. “Oh?”

“You’ve brought hope to them,” he says further. He presses a glass full of a translucent blue liquid into her hand. Its aroma is distinctly alcoholic, but it’s masked by a heady, cloying sweetness that reminds her of jasmine flowers.

She looks down at it warily. Humans and Angara have very different physiology as she’d learned when Jaal had experimentally tried some of Drack’s roast one night, and had spent the rest of the night with a swollen tongue. She hadn’t even seen the Krogan coax the Angara into trying the food, yet Lexi had reprimanded her for a good portion of an hour regardless.

“I ran it by Lexi,” Jaal says. “She says it is safe for you to drink, on the condition I do not try to get fully inebriated.”

“Because it’s poisonous if I’m drunk?”

“No, I believe it was something to do with propriety.”

She cannot bite back the laughter that bubbles from her lips. “Yeah, that sounds like her alright,” she says, taking a cautious sip from the liquid. Though it may have a sickeningly sweet scent, its surprisingly pleasant, and citrusy, like a combination of oranges and grapefruits with a hint of cinnamon. It floods her senses with instant warmth, starting in her chest until she can feel the heat in the tips of her fingers.

Jaal lets out a breathy laugh as she quickly downed two more mouths, amused by how much she enjoys it. “She cares about you,” he says. “Lexi. It took much convincing to get her to leave your side, and it was only because of the Moshae’s own condition that she left. The love that you share is beautiful.”

She almost chokes on her drink. “Oh, no, we uhhhh… We’re not… I mean, I love her, but we’re not… well, _together_.”

“Ah, I see. Forgive me if I have caused any offence.”

Lia takes another long drink from her glass to avoid speaking for a moment. She stops just before things start to get weird, and a clear demonstration of her not wanting to speak to him. “It’s… fine. Humans are weird about… intimacy, of any form. Romantic, platonic, and…” She coughs. “Well, you know.”

“Sex is a natural part of existence.”

“Yeah, and you would think we’d be more open to talk about it because of that, but really… We usually only discuss it with people we are close with—”

“We are close though, are we not?”

“—in a romantic way,” she finishes. “Don’t worry about it, though. You didn’t know.”

“I will avoid discussing in the future.”

He looks so resigned, like the progress they have made in the past couple weeks in regards to their relationship have been for nought, rendered irrelevant by what she wouldn’t even consider a mistake. “No!” she says, and she isn’t quite certain if she’s trying to make him feel better, or if she’s trying to make herself feel better because she doesn’t want to see him upset. Likely a combination of both, she decides. “You can uh… talk to me, about anything, whenever. I was responsible for first contact, as poorly as it went, but that does mean I should answer any and all questions you have. I don’t mind, honestly. It’s just…” She downs the last of her drink. “Surprising? You shocked me, that’s all.”

“I would not want to make you uncomfortable—”

She is quick to reassure him otherwise. “You don’t.”

He ducks his head, mumbling something her translator doesn’t quite pick up, but when he looks up, his gaze is full of something she doesn’t quite recognise. Gratitude? Admiration? She isn’t quite certain, but warmth blossoms in her chest, and she knows it isn’t from the alcohol. Then, Jaal presses his lips together, and hums. “You are a curious woman, Pathfinder.”

The fact that he doesn’t use her name makes her feel like she’s just been branded; pain—white, hot, and angry—hits her, and it isn’t just from the bullet wound in her side that’s been the bane of her existence for the past three days. But then:

“My apologies, I meant ‘Lia.’ It is going to take some… getting used to, I think.”

“If you would prefer, you could continue to call me ‘Ryder’ or ‘Pathfinder.’ I don’t mind.”

That is a _blatant_ lie. She does mind. She would rather everyone call her Lia, but it’s a losing argument for almost everyone. Vetra, Cora, Kallo, Lexi and Suvi stick to protocol far too much for their own good, and if she told Gil, Peebee, Drack, and Liam to call her by her name, she knows they would just give her some ludicrous nickname instead. They harass her enough as it is, and she really shouldn’t add more fuel to the fire.

It’s their way of humanizing her, she supposes. None of them take their roles particularly seriously—save for Gil, who seems to somehow still make light of his job—but they are forced to respect Lia, and follow her every order, regardless of their own personal opinion.

Jaal is… Jaal is the only one who treats her as just another soul trying to find her place in Andromeda.

He makes her feel like a person.

She’s starting to regret downing her drink so quickly. God only knows she needs something to soothe her nerves before they get out of control. She knows herself, and she knows that if she goes unchecked, she might just break down in front of all these people. She’s been holding on by a thread for the past couple months, only letting herself fall apart when she’s alone. Or, she thinks wryly, when Jaal just happens to be looking for her while she’s by Scott’s side in the cryobay.

She’s still mortified that she ever let that happen, but he… he makes it difficult for her to lie to his face. Perhaps it’s those large eyes, with his almost expectant gaze. How can she lie to a face so hopeful, so trusting? How can she lie to someone who wants to see her succeed with all his heart?

“It is not,” Jaal says slowly, tentatively, “about what you mind. It is about what you want. Would you prefer that I call you Pathfinder Ryder?”

She pauses only to hide the way her heart seems to stop when she hears him return to using her title. “No.”

“Then it is settled, no?” he responds with a grin, taking a drink from his own glass of the strange alcoholic drink.

“I…” She isn’t quite certain how to respond. She falls into silence, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “You are not what I expected, Jaal,” she admits.

“What did you expect?”

She knows he only asks because she prompted the question, but she doesn’t quite know the answer. Someone more aloof? Someone less kind, less gentle? No: someone like Evra, whose heart and soul belonged to the Resistance; damned be these Milky Way aliens who’ve come into their lands. But she does not say any of this to him. It’s not his concern, and he does not need to know how low her expectations of him were. So, instead, she lies. Well, she doesn’t lie _exactly_ , but she warps the truth to fit what she wants him to hear.

“Someone who isn’t as kind as you are. Someone whose soul doesn’t burn with the light of a thousand suns.”

He flushes a deep fuchsia, and not even turning to examine a rather large flower sprouting out of an ornate silver planter can hide it. “I could say the same of you. Look around. Look at all you’ve done for the Angara.”

“Look at all _we’ve_ done,” she corrects without a second thought. “You were there with me too, when we rescued the Moshae. You fought for this just as hard as I did.”

He snorts. “Is it a human thing?”

“Is what a human thing?”

His gaze meets hers, the Angara sharply turning so he can look her in the eyes. “Giving credit to others, but refusing to accept any of the credit for yourself?”

His question stuns her into silence—a feat in and of itself. The Ryder twins are a chatty bunch, who are often being told to shut up rather than to speak up, especially when they are in their element. She wouldn’t say that she is in her element now—relations are still tense between the Initiative and the Angara, and she still has to bear the full brunt of it all—but the acceptance with which the natives of Andromeda are treating her… Lia might even say that she is starting to feel at home, despite how much she’d rather not admit it to herself. Still, she falters as she hears his question.

She’s regretting ever telling him that she’d answer any and all questions he had on humans, and human culture, provided she knows the answer.

“No,” she answers after a long moment. “Sometimes. Maybe? A few of us. I suppose I’m worse than most. I… do not accept compliments very easily.”

“Why?” The amount of questions he has for her seem endless, but she knows he’s just trying to understand—she does not know if he’s trying to understand humans as a whole, or if he’s just trying to understand who Lia Ryder is.

But this is a question she knows the answer to. “Because I believe myself to be undeserving,” she says, and the pain that flashes a cross his features is unmistakable, as though her self-consciousness pains him. He wants honesty, she thinks, so she will give him honesty. “Because I am far more critical of myself than I perhaps ought to be. Because I have a legacy to which I feel I must live up to. Because I am the last standing Ryder, and I must redeem my family’s name. Because,” Lia’s aware that she’s shaking, her entire body quivering with small tremors, “I have to prove them all wrong.”

Jaal reaches out for her, but instead, she forces the glass he’d given her back into his hands as she passes.

“I’ll be back on the Tempest,” she says under her breath, cursing her lack of composure.

And when she boards her ship, the first thing she does is pull out the bottle of rum she’d stashed away in her quarters. She tries to pour a glass with her shaking hands, images of her father’s death flashing before her eyes.

_“ETA is three, maybe four minutes!”_

_“We don’t have that long.”_

Lia lets out a curse as her eyes settle upon her father’s helmet sitting on the corner of her desk. He shouldn’t have saved her. Why had he? Why had he saved his young, inexperienced daughter? He was the Pathfinder everyone needed—the Pathfinder everyone still _needs_. By now, he would have terraformed all of Andromeda, and have found the other missing arks. What has she done? Made Eos viable again, and then spent weeks avoiding the Archon and his men?

She has done one notable thing, and even that is rendered irrelevant if the Archon gets his ways.

She runs her fingers over the glass of Alec’s N7 helmet, fingernails catching in the grooves of the metal. Battle scars—not unlike the one stretched across her side—that speak of the horrors Alec had survived while in the line of duty. To think that his death had been needless, voluntary.

They said that she’d all but come back from the dead after Habitat-7.

They said that her recovery was a miracle.

She understands now that, in body at least, she is the person who should’ve died on Habitat-7. In reality, she knows that Lia Ryder did die on Habitat-7. She died the instant her father made up his mind to save her life, rather than save his. Ever since then, she hadn’t been herself. She’d been _Pathfinder_ and _Ryder_ and _ma’am_ , but never just _Lia_. Jaal is the only one who treats her as the person she was before she was ever Pathfinder. Every time they speak, she can feel a little part of herself returning, until her personality is conflicting with itself.  Ryder is the leader; logical, emotionally distant, recluse, making the right decisions despite her own personal beliefs. Lia is…

She isn’t quite certain who Lia is anymore, but nowadays she dislikes looking at herself in the mirror, unable to recognise the person she’s become. Whatever happened to Lia Ryder, the equally mischievous counterpart to Scott Ryder?

She died on Habitat-7, that’s what happened to her, she thinks to herself.


	8. Carina

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Featuring a little bit of jealous!Jaal because when Reyes is around, you sure as hell have a little competition.

Lia doesn’t quite understand what people have against Kadara Port, or Kadara as a whole, really. The people who reside on the scavenger planet are not the… most savoury of folk, to put it politely, but they’re just trying to survive like the rest of them. She understands why some of them might have turned to illegal means. God only knows it hasn’t been easy living in Andromeda, and if she hadn’t been the Pathfinder, if her options were as limited as everyone else’s, she might very well have turned to other, less legal solutions too.

Some of these people, she thinks, did not deserve to be branded a criminal either. Many had been exiled from the Nexus for participating in the uprising that had led to Tann—the insufferable Salarian that he is—becoming Director. They had been promised a home, promised a new life, and they’d awoken to leaders they did not recognise, in an unfamiliar galaxy, with no home in sight.

She was going to find them a home, Lia promises silently, no matter what.

And soon, she adds on as an afterthought as a fight breaks out in Kralla’s Song.

She watches as the two Turians struggle to break through the other’s defences, running her finger around the lip of her cup of beer. She doesn’t even like alcohol really, but after the disaster that had been her meeting with Sloane Kelly, the de facto leader of Kadara Port, she’d take anything that’d soothe her nerves. Getting a gun pointed at her head hadn’t exactly been a part of the plan. She doubts Sloane would be willing to reopen negotiations after that disaster, but no matter, she has other means of getting what she wants.

Speaking of which…

“Run into trouble?” Reyes Vidal asks, his mischievous brown eyes meeting her own as he slides into the seat across from her. The moment he sits down, the Asari bartender has a glass of whiskey poured, and on the table before him. He flashes her his winning grin before turning back to the human Pathfinder. “Well?”

“I think you’ll find that Vehn Terev’s execution tomorrow will be missing its guest star,” Lia says with a small smile, taking a sip from her glass. Truth be told, she did not care what happened to the Angara who had handed the Moshae over to the Archon, but it was not her place to deal out justice where she saw fit, and neither did Sloane. The leader of Kadara Port was a formidable woman, but had no jurisdiction when it came to Angaran problems. Besides, after almost getting shot by Sloane, Lia saw no problems with helping let one of her prisoners go.

It isn’t like anyone could connect her to Vehn Terev’s miraculous escape from Sloane’s prison, either. She had made certain of that.

Reyes throws his head back, laughing. “You, my friend, are not what I expected you to be.”

“And what did you expect me to be?” she asks, catching a glimpse of Jaal out of the corner of her eye. He lurks by the window of Kralla’s Song, staring wistfully out at the horizon as though he’s just waiting to leave. He’s made it clear to already that he wants nothing to do with Kadara. She’d ask him why—again, she doesn’t understand the bad reputation Kadara gets—but they really haven’t spoken all that much since Aya, and sitting him down to ask why he doesn’t like Kadara seems strange.

Jaal holds her gaze for a moment, before turning back to look out the window. Under the table, one of his hands curls into a fist.

“Someone young and foolish,” Reyes says. She’d almost forgotten that she’d asked him a question, her mind preoccupied with Jaal’s strange behaviour. “Someone who does not know what she wants in life.”

She laughs. “You give me too much credit.”

“You deserve it.”

Lia cannot hide the blush that creeps up her neck, choosing instead to duck her head in an attempt to conceal her features behind her hair. It doesn’t quite work, but it’s better, she thinks, than nothing.

“A friend of yours?” Reyes asks as Jaal gets up and leaves Kralla’s Song, all but storming past their table. When she sputters, unable to come up with an answer, and uncertain as to how he came up with the question in the first place, he winks. “You’ve been shooting looks at him the entire time we’ve been talking.”

“We’re colleagues,” Lia offers in way of an answer, but Reyes refuses to accept it.

“That’s not what I asked. I asked if you two were friends. Or something more, perhaps?”

She does not answer his question.

He lifts a shoulder, shrugging. “No matter. If you do not wish to talk, I shall leave it be. Everyone has their secrets.” For some reason, she has a nagging feeling that he isn’t talking about her. “Now: what did Vehn Terev say?”

Lia has never been happier to discuss work. She hadn’t been quite certain where their conversation had been going, and truth be told, she didn’t want to find out. Reyes is… an interesting person, she’s decided, but she isn’t certain if she’d want their relationship to be anything more than strictly professional. As charming as he may be, he’s not the kind of person she’s looking for. He reminds her a little too much of Scott. When her brother wakes up— _when_ not _if_ —perhaps she will have to introduce them; both of them are suave, charming, confident, and handsome as all hell.

“Vehn Terev buried a datapad out in the Badlands,” Lia says. “He sent me the navpoint. I’ll be going after I finish my drink.” She downs the last of the bitter liquor. “Speaking of which…”

“Can’t convince you to stay?”

She pushes her chair back, “Unfortunately not. Pathfinder duties, and all.” To be quite honest, she didn’t really have to answer to anyone but herself regarding her Pathfinder duties. The last time she was on the Nexus, she hadn’t even _seen_ Director Tann or Addison, let alone spoken to them. Not that she would listen to their orders regardless. Tann and Addison both wanted what’s best for the Initiative, but they don’t care about the horrors the Angara are suffering.

And right now, the lives of all Angara are at a greater risk than the lives of those still aboard the Nexus.

Lia’s trying to be a good person. She isn’t trying to be the best Pathfinder. It’s almost a shame, she thinks, that the two cannot go hand in hand. One day, perhaps they will, but for the mean time she’ll have to settle for trying to please two entirely different audiences.

“I’ll see you around, Pathfinder,” Reyes says, and something about hearing her title used in place of her name makes her heart twinge.

She knows why it hurts, and the answer is a certain Angara who’d left Krallo’s Song ten minutes earlier.

She flashes Reyes as polite smile, the heels of her boots clicking against the metal grate flooring. The two fighting Turians from earlier seem to have made reparations, now holding hands as they share a bottle of wine. She cannot help but smile as she passes them, but the smile drops from her face the instant she steps out the door.

“Ryder,” a familiar voice says. She doesn’t respond, choosing instead to contact Drack and Vetra over the comms to see if they’re finished conducting whatever illegal business they have that she’d rather not know about. “Ryder.”

“Peebee?” Lia says, contacting her Asari companion. “Want to meet me down by the ship in ten minutes? I need to go look for a datapad in the Badlands.”

_“Uhhhh, sure? Why’s it in the Badlands? You know what, tell me later, there’s this—oh are you shitting me? REALLY? Sorry, Ryder. Might be running a little late, because this BASTARD is trying to sell me junk! Seriously? You think I’ll give you five hundred credits for this? It’s not even worth twenty, I can’t believe—”_

She sighs as the call disconnects, not surprised that the rogue has somehow managed to get herself into some trouble. It’s almost an uncanny talent, at this point.

“ _Lia._ ”

She turns at last to face Jaal, her stomach in knots. She has nothing against him, despite how hard she’s been trying to avoid him. It’s just… She doesn’t want to appear weak, yet on Aya, she’d all but fallen to pieces in front of him. And, God, it had been so easy too. It was almost as if she’d been carrying this burden for so long, she was so willing to spill her secrets to the first person that would listen. It couldn’t happen again. She’s the Pathfinder. She’s supposed to represent all of humanity. She’s supposed to be the saviour of the Initiative, and no one will respect her if she’s weak.

She’s not certain if she even respects herself.

Lia cannot bring herself to smile at the Angara. “Hi.”

He replies with her same terseness. “Hello.”

She rocks back and forth on her heels for a moment, deliberating. “I wanted to apologise—” they both say at the same time. He concedes first, bowing his head in a silent gesture for her to continue.

“I haven’t been fair to you for the past couple of days,” she says after a moment’s pause. “I… needed some time, after Aya. Your questions took me by surprise, and it’s been so long since anyone’s cared about _how_ I’m doing rather than _what_ I’m doing, and I wasn’t… prepared. It all sort of… fell out at once, and I didn’t mean for it to. By now, I’m certain you know that humans aren’t exactly as… open about their feelings as Angara are, and I’m worse than most. You received the short end of the stick when it came to that, I think.”

He frowns, perplexed by her words. “Short end of the… stick?”

“It means you got unlucky.”

“Why am I unlucky?”

“Um, I don’t know. Maybe because I can’t be half as helpful as you need me to be?” Her voice rises as she becomes more and more frustrated, cursing her lack of ability to communicate properly with others. Yet another thing Scott’s better at, she thinks.

But Jaal only laughs. “I came to apologise because I thought I had overstepped my bounds. When you said I could ask you any questions I had, I forgot about our… cultural differences. There are limits, I understand now. I did not mean to impose, but I am not unlucky, Lia. Not at all. You stand there apologising to me because I made a mistake, and you feel as though you are responsible because of who you are, when I should have known better.”

“You can’t be expected to know everything about me.”

“Then help me,” he says. “Let us get to know each other better, hm?”

“I…” She flushes a deep crimson, which only makes his smile grow. Unlike him, her pallor does not allow for her blush to be subtle, and he catches it every time. He at least can hide his blushing by saying it’s the way the light hits his purple-pink complexion. “I would like that.”


	9. Columba

Lia likes to think that she is a good person. She may be prone to fits of impulsive recklessness often resulting in lasting consequences, but she tries her hardest to fix her mistakes. While her good deeds may not necessarily countermand the bad ones, surely they must count for something, no? She may not be the best of people, but damn it all, she’s certainly a good one.

And if the vids were to be believed, bad things didn’t happen to bad people.

Then why was it that nothing _but_ bad things kept happening to her?

Vetra and Jaal recoil as she slams her fist into the side of a building, leaving a dent in the metal siding. She can’t believe that she’d believed Akksul would leave the Initiative alone. She’d thought, for one brief moment, that the Moshae might have swayed him during their last meeting, but now she knows just how far the radical Angara will go. The only lives that had been lost in this skirmish had been the lives belonging to his _Roekaar,_ but what if it had been different?

She couldn’t even begin to imagine what would have happened if she’d arrived five minutes later than she had.

“How _dare_ he?” Ryder growls. There isn’t a piece of her armour that isn’t stained with blue Angaran blood. Akksul hadn’t actually attacked the human settlement on Eos, but he had thought he had. He had sent an entire battalion to wipe out what he’d thought to be Prodromos, only to be met with an abandoned outpost, and one very angry Pathfinder, and her friends.

She can’t remember a time that she’s ever been this angry with someone. She can’t remember the last time she wanted to see someone dead. Quite frankly, forgiving the Archon seems more likely than her forgiving Akksul at this point. The Kett leader harbours nothing personal against her, but Akksul?

He’d gone after her first settlement to hurt her, and she has no intention of letting this slide. “I’m going to kill him.”

She knows that, under any other circumstances, Jaal would advise not returning violence with violence, but neither he nor Vetra seem to want to tell her what to do. Her two nonhuman companions merely cross their arms, and watch as she paces back and forth, her hands still wrapped tightly around the grip of her Black Widow sniper rifle as though she’s expecting more of Akksul’s men.

Men, who will see no mercy if they face her right now.

“Ryder,” Jaal says, sharply, as the human pathfinder raises her fist to punch the side of the building again. She turns on her heel to face him, but before she can raise her voice, he speaks. “You are going to get yourself hurt.”

She refuses to admit that he’s right, but she does lower her fists. Nothing is going to come of her attacking a building anyway. What she needs to do is get back to August Bradley, and inform him all is well, that Eos is saved. “I stand by what I said.” Lia’s lower lip curls in disgust. “I’m going to kill that arrogant, smug, racist—”

 Jaal catches her by her shoulders, his three-fingered grip holding tight even as she fights against him. “ _Lia_.” He’s not as stern as he was before, his voice hardly louder than a whisper, but she stills, shaking like a leaf in his arms.

God help her, she’s so tired. She doesn’t want to be the Pathfinder. She doesn’t want the Initiative depending on her. She doesn’t want to constantly try to be one step ahead of Akksul, lest he destroy all her months’ worth of hard work with one fell sweep.

“I’ll contact Bradley, and uh… going to go… calibrate some… thing,” Vetra coughs into one hand, holding her gun in the other. The Turian whistles—Lia hadn’t been aware that Turians could even whistle until this very moment, what with their mandibles—as she walks off, keeping her gaze far away from the human and the Angara.

“He’s going to keep coming after us, isn’t he?” She cannot keep her voice from cracking as she leans into Jaal’s chest, the Angara running a gloved hand through her hair. “He’s not going to stop until we’re all dead, or he is. I don’t… I don’t want it to come to that. I don’t want to have to kill him. I didn’t even want to kill the _Roekaar_ , but they were shooting at me, and I couldn’t get them to stop, and—”

He hushes her, gently. “I know. You are remarkable, Lia. I am certain you can come up with something. We will show him you mean no harm. You are here because you have nowhere else to go. You are here to find home.” _You are not the Kett_ , is all she hears. _You are not like the last aliens who came to Heleus._

“He doesn’t know that, or if he does, he doesn’t believe any of it.”

“I am certain you will change his mind,” the Angara murmurs. “You are good at convincing people.”

The absurdity of his statement makes her snort, momentarily distracting her from everything else at hand. “I’m really not.”

“You convinced me, did you not?” he asks.

“You’re different.”

“How?”

“I…” She looks away, unable to provide him an answer she can bring herself to say. Lia’s trying to be more open, trying to express her inner thoughts more freely—trying to be Angaran, she thinks wryly—but the answer is not something she wants so share. _I wanted you to trust me. I wanted you to like me. I wanted… I wanted—_ “ _You_ ,” she says after a moment, “are different. You are not Akksul.”

He smiles at that, keeping back a laugh. “No. I am not. The universe is too small for one Akksul, let alone two, no?”

“That’s not quite what I meant—” she starts. She’d meant to say that he was kinder, more understanding— _gentler_. Someone whose company she enjoyed, and relished, not someone whose mere mention of his name made her sick to her stomach.

But he cuts her off. “I know what you meant, Lia.” His gaze drifts to the ground, as though the sand underfoot is the most interesting thing he’s ever seen. “Thank you.”

She doesn’t have a response for him that doesn’t make her sound like a fool.

“Come,” he says, and he sounds a little cheerier, but he’s still not back to being loud, and as boisterous as ever. “We should go get you cleaned up.”

Though Eos has been terraformed for quite some time now, no thanks to Peebee, Vetra, and Cora’s assistance with activating the Remnant Vault, the Tempest’s climate controlled environment is still a great relief from the rather hot planet surface. Everyone has a million questions for her, a million things they need her to do, a dozen places she needs to go and pull rank to retrieve something special, and SAM helpfully reminds her that she has twenty emails, and three pending vidcalls she needs to address.

But Tempest’s crew takes one look at the sand and blood-covered Pathfinder, and the bags under her eyes, and decide that their problems can wait another day. Vetra grabs Cora without asking for Ryder’s permission, insisting that she wants some company when she goes to debrief August Bradley in person. The women hesitate for a moment, giving Ryder the option to stop them, but when no protests comes from the Pathfinder, Cora grabs her gun, and heads off the ship without a second word.

Drack comes barging around the corner—though Drack rarely does anything quietly, in all honesty—and his stomping footsteps give her a headache, but all he does is say that he’s here for Ryder if she ever needs to talk. He knows how difficult it can be sometimes, to fight for a cause when everything seems hopeless. She returns his offer with a smile, and a murmured thanks as Peebee escorts him away, going on about Rem-Tech—none of which the krogan seems to understand. He indulges the young Asari anyway. The doors to the Pathfinder’s quarters hiss open as Lia, and Jaal approach. SAM locks the door behind them, sending an alert to the other crew members to request entry.

“You don’t have to stay and help,” she murmurs as Jaal begins unclasping parts of her armour, setting them down on her desk to clean later. She lifts her arms as he taps her shoulder, allowing him to pull off her chest piece. She watches as he hesitates, considering her words.

Then: “I want to.” The chest piece falls away, baring her skin-tight, black under armour beneath. It covers her completely, leaving only her hands, feet, and neck bare, but she still feels more exposed than ever. She crosses her legs, arms wrapped around her chest as though to offer her some modicum of modesty, but Jaal’s eyes never drift from hers, even as he looks back at her over his shoulder, taking a seat at her desk.

She doesn’t like other people touching the armour, truth be told. It was her father’s spare set that she’d had altered, and the N7 colour and branding serves as a constant reminder that she does not deserve to be Pathfinder. He was the one who’d spent years training to lead the Initiative, and she’d, what? Been in the right place, at the right time? She’s considered asking someone to repaint it, to remove the branding from it entirely, and replace it with the colours of the Initiative, but it didn’t seem… right. Hell, it’d be better to lock it up, and throw away the key, but resources are scarce, and if she did that, then she’d just be losing another piece of her father.

But, for some strange reason, she doesn’t feel the urge to stop Jaal as he takes a damp cloth, and start wiping the armour clean of blue Angaran blood.

“You should shower,” is all he says, before resuming his work, lowering his gaze once more. Is she seeing things, or do his cheeks flush indigo?

When Kallo had first shown her to her quarters, she’d thought it absurd that the Pathfinder had such large quarters on such a small vessel. She’d insisted that she was fine with sleeping with the others, but Cora had soon made it clear that such a thing was unacceptable. Still, the private bathroom was a luxury Lia had not had in a very long time, too used to living with other people in a place that wasn’t her own. She can’t remember the last time she’d lived in a place long enough to call it home—at least that had made it easy to pack up and move to Andromeda, she thinks, turning the knob on the shower.

Her breath hitches in her throat the instant the water hit her bare skin. But no tears come. She’s cried too much ever since they got here, and she isn’t certain she’s capable of it anymore. She just feels hollow, empty. Today served as a reminder that no matter how hard she tries, there is going to be someone out there who wants to see her fail. What if Akksul had succeeded? What if they hadn’t intercepted his messages in time? What if he’d attacked Prodromos, instead of Site 1 and Site 2? How many people would have died then?

She pours a small amount of soap into her hands, massaging it into her scalp. The water runs down the drain, blue with blood. She closes her eyes, her hands moving on autopilot as they wash the blood and sweat from her skin—some her own, some from the countless _Roekaar_ she killed. Her stomach twists thinking about the many family members they’ve left behind. What would happen if Jaal died? What would she do?

She’s never met his family, only spoken to them— _briefly_ —over the calls he’s had with them. She only knows three of his five mothers. Would she have to look Sahuna, Vaasana, and Feladyr in the eyes as she informed them of his death? What of his brothers and sisters? Would they all blame her for his death?

Lia knows she would.

 _Pathfinder,_ says SAM over their private channel. _I know you requested your privacy, however, I felt it wise to inform you that you have been in the bathroom for precisely forty three minutes. Jaal appears to be growing concerned._

“Thanks, SAM,” she says quietly, turning off the water. She dries herself down, slipping on the clothes she’d brought into the bathroom with her—little more than simple tank top, and tight fitting sweats. As much as she wants to hide in her quarters for the rest of the day under the guise of “figuring out their next move against Akksul,” she knows this isn’t possible. There’s still things she needs to do.

“Lia,” Jaal says in way of a greeting as she steps out of the bathroom, looking marginally better than she had before. She notes that her armour has been cleaned, and even put back on its proper place on the shelves by her desk.

“You look… worried,” she says, noting the exhaustion that is clear on his features that hadn’t been there before. “What is it?”

“I received a message from Akksul,” he sighs. “It is not a pleasant one.” He swipes at his omni-tool, displaying the holographic image of the _Roekaar_ leader in front of her sofa.

 _“Jaal Ama Darav.”_ Akksul’s scarred features twist as he scowls, spitting out his former friend’s name as though it is a curse. _“You always were a short-sighted fool. Helping an outsider instead of your own people. You’re unfit to bear your family’s name.”_

Lia swallows, hard, the insult to Jaal’s honour hurting her almost as much as it seems to hurt her Angaran companion. She almost wishes Akksul had been here in person to deliver his message, only so she could retaliate with venomous words of her own. Last time the two had spoken on Aya, she’d tried her utmost to be diplomatic, but he’d responded with anger, and had stormed off before she could get in a word otherwise. “Dammit,” she sighs, rubbing at the bridge of her nose. “I didn’t… I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. Not to you. I didn’t want to make my enemies yours.”

Jaal laughs, but she can see the pain in his eyes from Akksul’s insults. His words have cut deeper than Jaal is willing to let on, choosing instead to keep it private—something, she notes, that is atypical for Angara. She wonders if her need for privacy, if her need to keep her feelings private is starting to rub off on him. She hopes not. “He’s said similar things before. I’m used to it.”

“You shouldn’t have to be used to it.”

“He’s never been a particularly kind person,” Jaal mutters. “Even when he was a child. When we were students, the Moshae… paired us together. It… went as well as you can imagine. We’ve never gotten along.”

She frowns at the image of Akksul, still projected in her room. “Someone not get along with you? Impossible. Sounds like he’s just jealous.”

“Of what?”

“What isn’t there to be jealous of?” she asks in return. “I mean, look at you. You’re better than him in every way that matters. You’re the better man.”

This time, she’s certain that Jaal is blushing. “ _Well_ ,” he says, chuckling. The spark in his eyes has returned. “I am better-looking.” She doesn’t know enough about Angaran beauty standards to agree or disagree, but she certainly knows how he compares to her standards, and… Just thinking about the subject makes her blush. Thank God that Jaal doesn’t seem to notice. “Akksul wants us to do something reckless. Let’s not give him the satisfaction.”

“Me? Do something reckless? Never.”

He shoots her a look out of the corner of his eye at her sarcasm, swiping at his omni-tool to make Akksul’s image disappear. “You jest, but you can be level-headed when you want to be. You typically are. I think you are prone to following your heart, rather than your head, and that is where your bouts of ‘recklessness’ come from.” He moves away from her desk, pushing himself to his feet. He gently cups the side of her face, giving her a moment to step away before he presses on, aware that her personal boundaries are different than his own. “I never thanked you for Voeld.”

“You were too busy with what we’d found out,” she mumbles. “I wasn’t concerned.”

“But you didn’t have to save my people,” he says. “They weren’t your responsibility. You could have left them to die. You could have destroyed the facility with them in it, but you did not. You saved my people, and you sent Initiative forces weeks later to destroy it. My expectations of you when we first met were wrong, and I wanted you to know that I was once like Akksul. I had my doubts about you.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because if you can change my mind, then you can change his. You said earlier that I was different. I wasn’t. You made me different.” Jaal pushes his shoulders back, looking off to the side. “If you wish for me to leave—”

“Leave?” She can hardly believe what she’s hearing. “Why… why would I want that?”

“Because I am not the man you think I am, Ryder.”

“Don’t call me that,” she snaps with enough sharpness that he recoils. He glances towards the door, as though ready to flee at any moment.

“I was not born like I am.”

“None of us are. We grow, we change, and if I looked back at the person before I left the Milky Way, I don’t think I’d recognise her.” She’s almost angered by his words. How dare he think she does not want him here? She would be suspicious too, if aliens came out of nowhere, and made a home for themselves among her people. Especially if the last aliens had wiped a third of their population out. But what she says is true. She looks back at who she was before the Initiative, through vids her mother had taken before she’d gotten sick, through the log entries Lia had written, and it’s like she’s hearing about another person’s life.

She looks down at Jaal’s hands, taking one of them in both of her own. She can feel the thrum of his bioelectricity running under his skin, spiking when her skin comes in contact with his. Experimentally, she summons her biotics, sending back a short pulse. He starts, but realising that they came from her and not from some external source, he relaxes. “ _Lia_ —”

“I want you here.” If she hadn’t been making a conscious attempt at being more open with her thoughts, she knows she would have let him walk away from the Initiative a long time ago. “Stay. Please.”

He leans down to her level, pressing his forehead against hers. “You’re going to be the death of me,” he says, so quiet she can barely hear him.

But he makes no attempt to leave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't like my Ryders wearing the N7 armour to be quite honest, especially since they haven't really _worked_ for it, you know? Still, I felt it was important for Lia. Character development on the armour front coming... later. You'll see. Anyway, Akksul, am I right? And man, Turians and their calibrations. _*side-eyes Garrus*_


	10. Cassiopeia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So.... many... chapter titles... with C names. Regardless - Hunting the Archon officially starts...
> 
> Now.

Ryder’s starting to think that she should stop making plans for the situation never seems to be how it initially appears. They’ve spent the past couple weeks tracking down the Archon’s ship—or, more importantly, the Remnant map to Meridian the Archon has in his possession, which could be the key to terraforming the entirety of Heleus—and at last, they’ve found the ship, but there is… a slight complication. Although, she isn’t certain if one could call the Salarian Ark Paarchero being tethered to the Archon’s ship, with almost all of Paarchero’s inhabitants captured and experimented on by the Kett as a “slight complication.”

In her books, that’s a rather large complication, really.

There are a few things, however, that at least let Ryder pretend like things are going to turn out alright. The fact that the Salarian Pathfinder, Zevin Raeka, is still alive is a miracle, but Ryder knows better than to think that the rest of this mission will goes as smoothly. She’s learned to expect the worst.

“Hey, hey, hey, take it easy,” Lia urges as Raeka blinks her large eyes, pushing herself up onto her elbows. The Salarians were clever, hiding their Pathfinder in a crypod designated for a civilian, but Lia does not know how long the Pathfinder has spent in cryostasis, and she speaks from experience when she says cryostasis is hardly enjoyable.

But Raeka shakes her off, scratching at one of her two horns protruding from her skull, a pale rose in colour, and speckled with white. “No need,” she insists. “I’m fine. Salarian stasis recovery is almost immediate.”

“I… wasn’t talking about the physical drawbacks.” Lia keeps her voice quiet, low, as the Salarian reacclimatises to her surroundings. She knows the disorientation that can come from waking up in a place so familiar, seeing how much it has changed in the time they’d been asleep. It’s like looking in a mirror, only for the glass to portray the image the right way round—the perfect combination of strange, and familiar.

Raeka doesn’t seem to listen to her, flexing all her joints to rid of the stiffness. She conducts a physical examination of herself in seconds, Salarians able to think three times as fast as even the cleverest human. “Thank you for your concern, but I’m fine. Now, onto more important questions…” She takes a long look at Ryder, Vetra, and Jaal—on whom her gaze lingers on the longest. It’s likely, she realises, that Raeka has not seen an Angara before. “Who are you?”

“That’s Vetra Nyx—” The Turian gives a curt nod, “—and that’s Jaal Ama Darav. My crew. As for myself: Lia Ryder, Pathfinder for the human ark,” she says, hating the way her title sounds on her tongue. She’s starting to become used to it, but it will take her a while longer before the title belongs to her, and doesn’t feel like it still belongs to her father.

And then, only serving as a further reminder that she will never be the Pathfinder the Initiative had appointed before they left the Milky Way: “Where’s Alec?” Though Lia’s certain Raeka means nothing by her inquiry, the question still feels like she’s just been stabbed in the stomach.

Although, that might just be the lingering pain from being shot, she thinks in hindsight. “Dead.” The answer, on the other hand, doesn’t pain her, not anymore. She’s made her peace with her father’s death, even if she isn’t quite over it. In the end, despite how absent he’d been, they were still family. “He had me appointed in his place.”

Raeka hesitates, processing the news of Alec’s death for a second before she gets to her feet. She’s unsteady for a second, but quickly rights herself. “Stasis was a mistake,” Ryder hears her mutter as she staggers over to a console. “I never should have agreed to it. You here on a rescue mission?”

“Something like that,” she answers, watching as the Salarian punches something into the console, typing faster than the human is capable of reading. “We’ll need your help to get this right. Things are a lot worse than you’d think.”

Raeka squints at whatever information is displayed on the console, flying through the words on the screen so quickly they look like a blur to Ryder’s eyes. “Yes, I can see that. This is madness. All of it.”

“What happened?”

“A hostile species—” she starts.

“The Kett,” chimes in Jaal before lapsing back into silence.

Raeka continues on, undeterred. “An armada—set upon us. Our captain saw no choice but surrender. Said we’d live to fight another day. He convinced me to hide in the general population, and to dismantle my SAM so we wouldn’t fall into enemy hands. But we’re still in their grasp, I see.”

“Yeah, they’ve been fucking up Heleus real bad, don’t even get me started,” Lia says, earning an amused snort from the other Pathfinder. “We need something from the Kett ship. A map. We can’t lead without it. The Archon, their… leader, but he doesn’t know how to read the map. I do, and whatever the hell the map leads to, he wants it, so we need to get there first. But we can’t leave the ark behind. Can you wake a team? Some sort of crew? We’ll handle the Kett if you can prepare the ark for escape.”

“That’ll be no trouble. And then I’ll work on freeing the ark, so you can focus on your objective.”

She is surprised that Raeka is so willingly deferring to Lia’s orders. The Salarian is, after all, the senior, more experienced Pathfinder—in theory, anyway. Raeka lacks Ryder’s personal experience, but Ryder also lacks Raeka’s training. She isn’t quite certain who’s technically in charge here. “Stay quiet, and stay careful,” Lia warns. “The Kett are dangerous. Avoid them at all costs.”

She lets out a deep breath, glancing back at her console. “Yes, yes, of course. Will do, Pathfinder.”

It’s weird hearing her title from another fellow Pathfinder. She’d have thought that a woman of her status would at least refer to her by her name. “I’m keying you into our comms. We’ll stay in touch.”

Lia isn’t particularly great with the up-close-and-personal combat often required of her out in the field. Yet another thing Scott is better at than she is, though he’s got his superior biotic abilities that give him the upper hand. Her strengths, however, lie in infiltration, and reconnaissance. She doesn’t speak of her days in the Alliance much, preferring to leave her past—which is now nearly seven hundred years behind her—in the past, where it belongs. Still, peacekeeping hadn’t always been easy, and things sometimes had to get dirty. There hadn’t been any honour in what she had been tasked with doing, sneaking into places, and taking out hostiles before they’d been an even greater threat.

She didn’t like it when people thanked her for her service. They wouldn’t thank her if they knew she hadn’t always been certain of her victims’ guilt before she shot them down from nearly two thousand metres away. By the time their bodies hit the pavement, she’d be gone. The Alliance had given her a medal, for all the attacks she’d stopped. She’d left in behind when she’d joined the Initiative, along with all her other belongings from her days in the Alliance.

They run into trouble the instant they step onto the Kett ship. The Kett hadn’t be expecting them, judging by the way none of them had their weapons ready, but within seconds, they’ve opened fire. She doesn’t hesitate as she wraps a cloak around herself, rendering herself invisible as she books it to cover, before picking off Kett one by one with her sniper rifle. The fight is over quickly, but they’ve officially lost the element of surprise. The rest of the Kett must now know that there are Initiative intruders on their ship. Kett aren’t the smartest sentient race she’s ever met, but even they must know that she’s one of the intruders. Wherever there seems to be trouble, Ryder seems to be at the heart of it all.

“So much for sneaking in,” she says under her breath, cursing their luck.

Jaal looks to her expectantly. “What do we do now?”

She doesn’t have an answer for him, but thankfully, SAM does. _If you locate a terminal, I may be able to analyse their systems._ The AI falls silent as Ryder scans the room for a terminal, but when she finds one, he quickly connects. _Accessing the ship’s systems now… Pathfinder. I have located the Archon’s private chamber._

“Is the Archon in his chambers?” she asks. She and the Archon have yet to meet in person, and she’d rather keep it that way. The higher the status of the Kett is, the stronger they seem to be due to whatever genetic manipulation that occurs during Exaltation. She does not want to know how strong the Archon is.

_That information is not accessible. Only the room’s location._

“Keep working on that, SAM, if you would. What of security measures? What should we be expecting?”

_An alert was issued, but I have countermanded it. The delay is only temporary. There are large amounts of Kett forces aboard the ship, as to be expected, as well as multiple barracks. Checking inventory logs shows high quantities of weapons, and ammunition._

“Thank you.” She turns back to Jaal and Vetra. “The Moshae said the relic would be in his chamber. Or at least, that’s where it was the last time she saw it. We need to get going. They know we’re here now, and we know they’ve got a small army aboard this damn thing. Two things I’m not liking.”

“Ryder!” The Salarian Pathfinder nearly scares the living daylights out of her, Lia having not expected to see her aboard the Kett ship with her.

“Raeka? I thought you were on the ark.”

She shakes her head, guiding the human Pathfinder around the corner where five or so more armed Salarians await. “Too many of our people are missing.”

“If we don’t find them now, we never will,” another Salarian mournfully mutters.

Raeka nods in agreement, gesturing to her male companion. “This is Hayjer, the captain of our ark. We’ll focus on the rescue, while you push ahead, Ryder.”

 _A secondary route is available,_ SAM informs. _Marking navpoint._

She doesn’t like this plan. At all. Raeka and Hayjer might be able to speed things up, but they’re also creating another target. Lia wants to minimize casualties, dammit, and throwing the Salarian Pathfinder and captain into the line of fire doesn’t seem like the way to do that. But Pathfinders are nothing if not stubborn, and Lia suspects she won’t be able to change Raeka’s mind. “All right,” she says, unlocking the doors leading towards the Salarians’ navpoint as dictated on her omni-tool despite her better judgement. “Be careful. I’m sorry we can’t help you—”

“Don’t be,” says Raeka. “I understand. You have your own mission. Good luck, Pathfinder.”

She hesitates, watching as the doors hiss shut behind them. “You too, Pathfinder.”

Jaal, Vetra, and Lia continue onwards, undeterred by the fact that the Kett are now looking for them. Several times, they duck into storage closets, and small rooms to avoid a passing Kett patrol. She will not risk their lives if only to take down a few more Kett, even if Jaal grumbles with displeasure. There are only three of them, and God knows how many hostile Kett.

But they can’t always avoid trouble.

It almost seems like they can’t go through more than three rooms before running into twenty-some Kett who are prepared to fight to their deaths to see the three of them dead. But dammit, she’s ready to die for this too. The Kett, however, seem to come in endless waves, and it’s as though they’re aware of where she’s trying to go for almost every door locks in her face. It is only thanks to SAM overriding the doors to alternate routes before the Kett can force manual lockdown that they can proceed.

When she’d been aboard Ark Paarchero, she’d wondered why she hadn’t run into any Kett. No guards, no watchmen, nothing. But in the seconds she has between firing her weapon, and avoiding getting shot, she takes a look out the window, and is almost sick to her stomach. The arks are not military ships, hosting primarily civilian life, and have no external weapons. Even the weapons on board are limited to basic pistols, and a handful of assault rifles. The Archon’s ship, however, is a warship, and is outfitted to the teeth. Including two turrets aimed at Ark Paarchero, ready to fire upon the ark, and killing all remaining inhabitants should anyone dare to revolt. It’s the ace up the Archon’s proverbial sleeve, a silent promise of complete and utter destruction that forces the Salarians into willing subjugation. She understands now why Captain Hayjer had surrendered so easily.

In one split second, the Kett could all but wipe the Salarians from the face of Heleus.

It’s a problem they’ll have to deal before they get out of here, but right now, the map needs to come first.

“Raeka, we’ve got a problem,” Ryder says through the glass that separates her from the Salarians. “Did you see the guns out there?”

“I know. They’ll destroy the ark before we can power up the engines. Unless…”

“Unless we’re saved by some miracle?”

Raeka smiles, though it’s bittersweet. Whatever idea she has, it’ll promise success, but she’s already lost one man to the Kett already, and already Lia can see how exhausted she is. At least she knows she isn’t the only one struggling to be the Pathfinder everyone needs. “No, just simple ingenuity. Venro here used to repair FTL drives on private cruisers. Venro—an EMP device?”

Venro inclines her head, thinking. “It might work. If we rig one to detonate near those guns, they’d lose power.”

“And the ark would be out of harm’s way,” Raeka adds on.

But Ryder has more pressing concerns. “And your missing people?”

“I’ll keep looking. Captain Hayjer and Venro will focus on the EMP.”

This plan keeps getting riskier and riskier with every passing second. “Okay,” she says, and she knows that this too will be something she’ll regret later. “Everyone be careful. Good luck.”

“We’ll stay in touch over the radio,” Raeka says, shooting one last look at her fallen comrade’s body before she gathers the rest of her group, and continues pushing onward.

Ryder has no choice but to do the same. They come across a laboratory, full of Kett scientists who run off the instant they see her. Scott would have been amused by that, she thinks, going on about how intimidating he is. But Scott isn’t here. Nothing about this laboratory doesn’t make her queasy, and she can’t come up with any form of humour when faced with a live kaerkyn paralyzed in mid-air, surrounded by some sort of orange light that seems to be keeping it suspended. She does not want to know what horrors the Kett scientists were inflicting on the poor creature judging by the many scalpels stained with electric green kaerkyn blood.

She reaches out to touch the insectoid experimentally, and it lets out a pained whine as her fingers brush its shelled head. She doesn’t think twice as she takes out her pistol, and shoots it once between the eyes. Better a quick death from her, than the prolonged torture from the Kett, she thinks. It falls to the floor the instant it dies, the paralyzing field around it dissolving upon the moment of death.

Vetra and Jaal have the sense not to comment.

They fight their way through the backup the scientists have called, continuing on. She stops only to scan the dozens of cryopods littering a room, praying that some of them still contain the Salarian colonists they’re supposed to. All of them are empty, and soon understands why. In the next room is a pile of corpses, dead Salarians lined up on the ground, several on top of each other to save room. Fifteen dead Salarians, next to fifteen Exaltation pods. She can fill in the blanks, but by God, she wish she didn’t have to. Death, she supposes, is better than Exaltation, but if the Kett are trying to Exalt the Salarians… Will they soon be like the Angara, killing enemies that once were people they loved?

 Ryder’s starting to feel like all of this is for nought. How is she supposed to go back to the Tempest, and tell Kallo of how many Salarians died at the hands of the Kett? How is she supposed to tell him that they were too late?

She needs to save those still alive. She can’t give up now, not when they’re so close.

The next room is another laboratory, but there isn’t a single living soul in sight. Even with her infrared sensors, she cannot detect a life form in the room besides herself, Jaal, and Vetra. A vat full of a strange, bubbling green liquid four times taller than she is stands in the corner of the room. She has a sneaking suspicion that it is meant to contain something other than just the liquid. She has a bad feeling about this, like they should turn back down the hall they’d come, but they’re halfway across the room already, and this is the closest way to the Archon’s chambers.

 _Ryder, caution—_ SAM starts, but his warning comes a second too late.

Their weapons are pulled from their hands by some sort of magnet in the floor, pulling them far out of reach. Her muscles lock up as the same orange light that had paralyzed the kaerkyn surrounds them, freezing them, and suspending them in the air. The room is large, and open, but her claustrophobia is already starting to kick in, the sensation of being trapped in her own body, unable to move anything but her head, sending her heart racing.

Deep breaths, she reminds herself. In for three seconds, out for three. She cannot have a panic attack, not here. What she needs to do is figure out how the hell to get free.

“It’s useless to struggle.” His voice is like ice, like steel, like everything cold, and lifeless, and lacking any form of emotion. It’s a voice she can hear in her dreams— _has_ heard in her dreams. The Archon strides towards her dressed in armour as black as night, and his head held high. His bony horns form a halo around his head, and draw attention to his cold, dead eyes. White irises stand out against the black, like the moon against the night sky. His lips are contorted into a macabre smile, baring yellowed, jagged teeth.

She isn’t certain if the blood pumping in her ears is because of her anxiety, or if it’s because she’s finally face to face with the monster that’s ruined all of their lives.

 _The Archon_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: the Archon is an asshole like he always is, and I regret using constellations as my chapter titles because "Lazarus Rising" would have made so much narrative sense.


	11. Ophiuchus

“I’ve been in this forsaken cluster for _decades_ , surrounded by amoeba.” The Archon, she knows from their brief interactions, is one for dramatic, unnecessary speeches. She’s never had the patience for them, but he does not care what she does, and does not like. He is a self-serving creature, who is egocentric to the extreme, despite those he harms in the pursuit of his despicable goals. “Then you arrive—a human, able to do the unthinkable.” he continues, examining Ryder, Vetra, and Jaal from all sides. He takes the most amount of interest in the Angara, even lets out a laugh as though amused by the fact that an Angara has even come this far in seeking revenge. She’s seen the bodies. She knows how many Resistance fighters have died trying to get anywhere near him. He makes his way back to Ryder, still sneering. “You even evaded me. Such an unlikely rival. It was almost… _invigorating_ to have one. And yet… it’s a fitting end.”

She can hardly hear him over the sound of her heart. Every part of her is shaking, and it is only through sheer force of will that she can keep her composure. She is more than her fears, she tells herself. It does little to help, fear too irrational to listen to her attempts to calm herself. “End?” she asks. “If you think I am going to die by your hands, you are sorely mistaken. I know what kind of man you are. I know what you do to people, and do not think that I will not kill you.”

“It is what I call ‘progress,’” he replies. “It is why I will succeed, and you, the pitiful creature that you are, will die _painfully_.”

“You think yourself a god, don’t you?” Ryder laughs in his face, and it’s laced with all the bitterness and sorrow she’s experienced in the past few months—full of her hatred of what he has done to the Angara, to her people, to the Salarians, to anyone who breathes Heleus’ air. “It’s pathetic. You hold yourself higher than above us all because it gives you something you do not have: _worth_. You are just as insignificant, just as mortal as the rest of us, and I _will_ see you bleed.”

“And you think yourself above me, above it all.”

“No.” She looks him dead in those empty eyes. “I think myself just as ordinary as every other soul. I know I bleed the same, and from experience, I know that I die the same, but I am more than you will _ever_ be.”

He tries to hide the way she’s getting under his skin, but his stone-cold features make his displeasure clear. She is but an ant to him, something to be crushed underfoot, yet she has managed to break through his hard exterior, dissecting him like his scientists had dissected so many others. He wraps his hand around her throat, grip so tight spots flash before her vision. He turns her head from side to side, examining her so closely she can smell the stench of something rotten on his breath. Then, before she can cry out, pain spikes at the base of her skull as a needle is plunged into her spine.

“A first sample,” the Archon says, and when he pulls back there is a vial of blood— _her blood_ —in one hand. He hands it off to the Kett standing behind him, before taking another syringe, this one full of a dark, green-black liquid, and injecting it in the same spot he’d taken blood out. “Your testing begins now. I will learn your secret soon enough.”

_No! They can’t, no, please, they can’t make her into one of theirs. Into the kaerkyn she’d put out of its misery. She’d come too far to die like this—_

The entire ship trembles, shaking with the force of an explosion. In the distance, she can hear gunfire. It must be Raeka, she realises. The Salarian Pathfinder has, rather unknowingly, come to save them.

“Report,” the Archon says, looking off somewhere over Ryder’s shoulder. She notes a chip embedded just under his jaw, flashing with a white blue light. Some sort of comm, perhaps? A pause. Then: “Await my arrival.” He looks back at her, narrowing his eyes as she struggles against the energy field. “Save your strength, human.”

And then he’s gone, and she’s still trapped, and she’s starting to feel like she can’t breathe, and there’s still the problem of the Salarian ark, and and andandand _and—_

“Raeka must have run into trouble,” murmurs Jaal as the Archon leaves the room, his armed escorts in close pursuit.

She cannot formulate an adequate response. Without the Archon to serve as a distraction, or as a focus for her mental energy, she can feel herself starting to tense up as she realises she’s still trapped in her own body. Lia has to get down, she has to. She isn’t certain she can stay up here a moment longer without passing out. “SAM, I need something! Anything!” Her desperation is all but palpable.

_I’m sensing a biological transmitter in your bloodstream now. Attempting to neutralize it._

“Well, _shit_ ,” she hisses. “Okay, that’s priority two for sure. Priority one: how the actual, literal _fuck_ do I get out of this?”

 _The containment fields only interact with living matter,_ the AI informs her. Her thoughts drift back to the kaerkyn, and how it too had been paralyzed, only freed when she’d lodged a bullet in its skull. _If you expire, the field around you will extinguish until manually reset. As you know, my access to your physiology allows me to enhance your vital signals when required. I can also do the opposite._

“I’m sorry, is that _really_ your plan?” she hisses. “You can process any and all options a thousand times faster than a human can, and _that’s_ what you come up with? I was kind of hoping to not die today, SAM.”

 _After stopping your heart, I would attempt to resuscitate, of course,_ SAM is quick to assure.

“Are there any other options? Viable or not?”

The artificial intelligence is silent for a short moment, and she knows he’s rerunning his calculations. Then, the answer that she’d been dreading comes. _None that I can determine._

It doesn’t seem like she has much of a choice. She cannot stay here. If she does, the Salarians are sure to die, and the Archon will only experiment on her until he learns how to access Rem-tech. “All right,” she says, despite Vetra’s loud protests. “Let’s do it.”

“Are you insane?” the Turian continues. “Is this really worth it? _Ryder!_ Listen to me!”

“There isn’t another option, Vetra.”

“Ryder.” Jaal’s voice lacks Vetra’s animosity, and sounds like he’s on the brink of tears. “If you don’t come back, if you don’t survive… know that it has been a pleasure.”

She doesn’t have the time to formulate a reply for the Angara, words dying on her lips, just as she too dies, her heart stopping in her chest with one final _thump_.

_“I’ll be damned,” Lia breathed out, admiring Habitat-7’s clear skies. Whatever it was that Alec had done in the strange, alien ruin, it seemed to have an immediate effect on the planet’s climate. Gone were the electric storms that made every hair on her arm raised. Instead, sunlight filtered in through the clouds. The mountains still floated, sure, but it was starting to look like there was hope after all. “It’s working. You did it.”_

_Alec tilts his head to the side, but even he’s fighting back a smile, his brown eyes glittering. “There’s hope, at least.”_

_“Which is exactly what we needed right about now,” she sighed. “It’s all anyone back on the ark is looking for, anyway. Hope it’ll work out.”_

_“Well, not if we stand around looking at sunsets. Let’s get back to the shuttle, and—” He turned, abruptly cut off as a wave of energy came rushing out of the depths of the alien structure, and before they could do anything, they were flung off the side of the building, hurtled through the air._

_She couldn’t see anything. Every breath she took felt like was inhaling glass dust that cut her throat with a million tiny slivers. Her vision faded, in and out, in and out. She needed air, she couldn’t breathe—couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe, oh God, she couldn’t breathe—but inhaling only made her lungs burn, and make her head spin._

_Every single one of ribs felt like it was broken, a sharp, searing pain that shot through her every time she tried to move. The glass of her helmet was shattered beyond repair, and she was inhaling mouthfuls of Habitat-7 toxic atmosphere. This was it, she thought. Her first day in Andromeda, and this was how she was going to die._

_Alec was at her side in an instant, cursing. Had the situation been any less serious, she would have laughed at the absurdity of it all. He had harassed her quite a lot when she was a teenager for how much she’d cursed—of course, that meant Scott had joined in, if only to piss their father off. Sometimes, she forgot just how similar she and Alec were. “Repeat! We need an emergency extraction now!”_

_“They’re spinning up the shuttle!” Cora’s voice crackled over the comms. “ETA is three, maybe four minutes!”_

_Alec looked his daughter dead in the eyes, and all she could see was herself staring back at her. “We don’t have that long.”_

_She couldn’t stop him as he removed his helmet—standard N7 issue, in almost new condition, and she’d always thought he’d loved that damned armour more than he’d loved his children—and placed it on his daughter’s shoulders. “Deep breaths!” he instructed, using what little oxygen he had left to speak._

_“Dad—” she started, the oxygen almost too much to handle as she coughs up all the argon that had filled her lungs a moment ago. “What—what are you doing—”_

_She couldn’t fight him off as he swatted her hands away, trying to remove his helmet to hand it back to him. He was the Pathfinder, the man the Initiative needed. “SAM, transfer Pathfinder access…” All of his words sounded like white noise, indecipherable nonsense she can’t quite understand. How could he do this? How could he leave both his children orphans? Ellen—mom—would have wanted him to live._

_But no parent should have to bury their children._

_“You’ll understand,” Alec croaks. “Someday. Remember, I may not have always shown it, but I hope you know that I did love you and Scott, Lia.”_

She comes to with a gasp that wracks her entire body, and as she reaches up to touch her cheeks, she realises she’s been crying. Images of Alec, of Ellen, of Scott had flashed before her eyes just before she’d lost consciousness. Ellen—seeing her children off as they left to formally join the Alliance.

_“If the two of you don’t get in for a picture, and look happy about it, I don’t care how old you are, I’ll ground you, and then you won’t be able to go,” Mom warned them, pulling her two children in for an embrace as their dad stood several feet away with a camera. “Now! Smile, and look like you love each other.”_

_“Mom—” started Scott, groaning._

_Lia rarely, if ever, agreed with her brother. Right now was an exception. “Have to agree with him, Mom.”_

_She swatted both of her children’s shoulders. “Scott Pollux Ryder, and Cordelia Casta Ryder, behave! Both of you.”_

_“No one calls me Cordelia but you,” she mumbled, but forced a smile to her lips as Alec snapped a pic of the three of them._

Lia had almost forgotten what Mom had looked like. She sniffs, wiping her tears away on the back of her hand. “That’s twice now I’ve come back from the dead. I can’t say the experience is improving.”

 _I believe it is preferable to the alternative,_ says SAM

“For the sake of my sanity,” Jaal says, Lia having almost forgotten that her companions are still trapped, “let there not be a third.”

Every part of her still hurts from dying, but she still laughs, limping over to the nearest Kett console where SAM manages to override the controls, and free both Vetra and Jaal. The Turian looks as though she’s ready to punch Lia, and she knows she will receive a stern talking to later. Jaal, on the other hand, looks exhausted, relieved, like he’d been expecting her to die, and stay dead, and he can’t believe that she’s alive, and—mostly—okay.

“Lia—” Jaal says, pulling her aside as they continue onwards through a maintenance tunnel where a rogue Wraith attacks them.

She knows what he wants to speak about, and she isn’t certain if she can indulge him. If she stops, even for a second, she’ll start thinking about everything, and she’ll break down. There isn’t time for her to do so. “We’ll talk later,” she says, stepping over the dead Wraith’s body, Vetra having neatly disposed of the creature before Lia had even realised it was there.

Jaal hesitates, looking as though he’s about to press her further, but he nods, and bites his tongue. Now is not the time, and this, even he knows.

 _“This is Raeka. Some of our people are still alive. I’m headed there now.”_ The Salarian Pathfinder’s voice is nothing short of a blessing, giving Lia a distraction as she continues marching forward towards the Archon’s chamber. _“Captain Hayjer, what’s your status?”_

_“The EMP is primed and ready.”_

“We’re almost to the Archon’s chambers,” Lia says. “Should be just around the corner. Stand by.”

The Archon’s chambers are precisely what she would expect from the tyrannical, Rem-tech obsessed Kett leader. The hallway is lined with vats filled with that strange translucent green liquid, only now, the vats are not empty. Instead, each individual vat contains one Salarian, each horrible deformed, with bone-like protrusions on their arms, and legs. The last vat contains what must have used to be a Krogan, now unrecognisable. Hard, shell plating have been replaced by thick, jagged bone. It resembles a Krogran just as much as exalted Angara resemble their former selves. Which is, to say, not all that much.

“Looks like a… Krogran,” Vetra says, voicing their thoughts aloud.

“It _was_ ,” Jaal murmurs. “Probably one of Drack’s missing scouts.”

 _The DNA is Krogran, but drastically altered,_ SAM confirms. _It’s clear the Kett are closing in on successfully exalting the species._

“I swear, if it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to kill the Archon,” Lia hisses, unable to look at the former Krogan for a second longer.

The next room is full of glowing pieces of Rem-tech suspended on pedestals that crackle with electricity that makes her sensitive biotics sing. She doesn’t quite know which one is the piece Rem-tech she’s looking for, but she has a nagging suspicion she’ll know it when she sees it. “Captain Hayjer, this is Ryder. We’ve reached the Archon’s sanctum.”

_“Give the word, and we’ll set off the EMP. Should disable the guns.”_

“Got it.” She glances back at Vetra and Jaal—who refuses to meet her gaze. A matter, she decides, she will press him on at a later date, provided they survive this. “All right, guys, we’re looking for a Remnant relic. Map of Meridian.”

“Why does he care so much about the Remnant anyway?” she hears Vetra mutter. “It’s an obsession.”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Lia says, circling a piece of Rem-tech. It appear to be little more than a slab of obsidian-looking metal, and not what she wants. The Moshae had drawn her a simple diagram before they’d left, of a strange, triangular shape. “And we need to beat him to the answer.”

 _There_ , at the end of the room, sat a single piece of Rem-tech far away from all the others, with a glowing three pointed star in the centre.

 _Pathfinder, this is the relic the Moshae described,_ SAM helpfully tells her. _It does seem to be a map._

Lia knows that her ability to interface is part of why the Archon is obsessed with figuring out what makes her tick, but truth be told, she isn’t quite certain how she does it herself. It’s like every part of her is thrumming with electricity, coming alive as she raises her hand, fingers outstretched. It’s like… using her biotics, after having not used them for a long time, pulling all the excess energy into existence, and then unleashing them in a moment.

The piece of Rem-tech responds under her touch, an interface shimmering into existence beneath her fingertips as the technology inclines backwards.

_I’ll overlay the chart we uncovered in the vault on Eos._

SAM projects the strange map they’d found in orange on top of the flickering blue projected from the centre of the strange piece of Rem-tech. It’s like fitting a key in a lock, the map shifting, and reshaping into something she can understand.

“Is that…?” Jaal breathes as the Rem-tech project an image of a strange, pyramid shape, clearly the size of a planet if the map’s scale is consistent. It makes the projected stars appear positively miniscule in comparison.

“It’s Meridian.” Despite all the setbacks they’ve faced today, hope blossoms in her heart. Perhaps they have a chance after all. If Meridian truly is the heart of the Vault network, perhaps they can revert all the “golden worlds” back to the paradises they should have been.

_Coordinate secured, Pathfinder._

_“So_ that’s _what you’re after.”_ She has her gun at the ready within a split second of hearing the Archon’s grating voice, but it’s no use, he isn’t really there. Instead, he’s a projection, a holographic image that walks steadily towards them, examining the map to Meridian over her shoulder. _“There’s more to Meridian than you know. Changing the weather is a fraction of its power—and I will not allow you to defile it.”_

She shakes her head, laughing at the audacity the Archon possesses. “You think you are capable of stopping me? I think you know by now I defy any, and all expectations. You did not allow me to escape my trap, and yet I did.”

 _“That wasn’t you.”_ Despite being little more than an image, the Archon’s gaze still bores into her soul. _“It was the artificial intelligence in your head. I’ve seen what transpired in the laboratory, and now I know what makes you… special. Meridian is mine. I’ve tolerated you long enough.”_ He turns on his heel, marching off. _“Once your vessels are destroyed, you will be stranded here.”_

Not likely, she thinks. “Captain Hayjer, if you would!”

 _“Happy to comply, Pathfinder,”_ Captain Hayjer replies, and the entire ship tilts as the EMP is fired, removing all power save for life-support from the ship, rendering the guns utterly useless.

They now, unfortunately, have to deal with the bloodthirsty Exalted Krogran, and the couple twenty some Kett forces the Archon has sent to deal with intruders. But it takes more than one hulking monster, and a handful of Kett to keep her down. She’s running on pure adrenaline now, her brush with death doing little but making her angry, and the room is cleared within a few short minutes.

 _Pathfinder, a moment,_ SAM says as they exit the Archon’s chambers. _I’m picking up Krogan life signs aboard the ship. Several captives are being held not far from your location. They are scheduled for exaltation._

“Could be the rest of Drack’s missing scouts,” Vetra says.

“SAM, do we have time to get there before the Kett restore power?” Lia asks. She cannot leave Drack’s men to die just as the exalted Krogan had. The Kett will twist them into monsters, and she owes it to the Krogan who’s saved her life more times than she can count to save his men. She knows he’d save Scott if given the opportunity.

_If you act quickly._

_“Ryder, it’s Raeka.”_ Just as Ryder sets off to go save Drack’s scouts, the Pathfinder comes in over the comms. _“I’m pinned down. Don’t think I’m going to make it.”_

Fuck. “Where are you?” She doesn’t know why she asks. She knows that there isn’t time to save both Raeka, and Drack’s scouts. She has to make a choice—she has to choose who she’s going to leave behind to die. A good Pathfinder would save Raeka. Saving her is what’s best for the Initiative, and Lia does not know who would take up the Salarian Pathfinder’s mantle. But she can’t do this to Drack.

_“Near holding cells where they’re keeping several of my people. They’re still alive. I ordered Captain Hayjer back to the ark.”_

She lets out a curse, wringing her hands. This is one of the moments, she knows, she will look back on in the future with regret, no matter what she chooses. She does not have time to think on it. If she waits for two long, both the Krogans, and Raeka will die. She has a choice now, and it will decide the question she’s been asking herself for weeks: is she the Pathfinder everyone wants her to be, or is she Lia, who would go to the ends of the universe to protect those she loves?

 “You should be with him.”

_“I couldn’t leave my people—I had to try. And now… I think it’s over. From one Pathfinder to another… farewell. Raeka out.”_

She lets out a cry of frustration. She doesn’t want to be the one making these decisions, she doesn’t want to decide whether or not someone gets to live or die, she doesn’t want, doesn’t want, doesn’t want—

She doesn’t want to be the Pathfinder.

 _There isn’t time to save both,_ SAM says, reaffirming her suspicions. _Once the Kett restore power, you’ll be trapped._

“This is our only chance to save Drack’s scouts.” For a Turian, Vetra cares an awful lot about the Krogan. She does not despise his kind with blind hatred, judging them as individuals rather than as a whole—as Akksul should with the Initiative—and her loyalty to Drack and his men makes her stomach knot. “They’ll be turned into more of those… monsters.”

“Trust me, I’m aware,” Ryder snaps, harsher than she means to sound. If Raeka were in her shoes, what would she choose? Would she save the lives of innocent civilians caught in the crossfire, or would she save the Pathfinder, who’s long since pledged their life and death to the Initiative? She knows the answer to the question, as much as she hates to hear it.

The Pathfinders knew what they were signing up for when they joined the Initiative.

She reloads her sniper rifle, grimacing as she makes her decision. “We save the Krogans,” she says, quietly. She cannot bring herself to meet either of her companions’ eyes. She does not want to know what they think about her decision. Her mind has been made, the cards dealt, and there’s no turning back now. It’s what she would want Raeka to choose if she were in Ryder’s shoes. It’s their job, to guide and protect the Initiative’s citizens, even if it costs them their life.

A lesson Alec had demonstrated himself.

A part of Ryder still hopes that she can still save Raeka even after saving the Krogan scouts, but SAM is hardly, if ever, wrong. Wave after wave of Kett try to stop them, and each of them fall to her bullets. She does not stop even as she gets shot, continuing onwards despite the agony she’s in. Lexi will kill her later, but if she doesn’t save the Krogans, then Raeka’s is sacrifice for nought. Her death has to mean something.

The Krogans are in bad shape when she finds them, half alive, and showing clear signs of experimentation with green-black bruises from the needles the Kett had plunged into them for whatever nefarious reasons. They are a hardy people though, and hobble out of their holding cell as she overrides the controls, opening the door.

_Pathfinder, the Kett are close to restoring the ship’s power._

She isn’t quite certain what she’d do without the AI. “Tempest, we’re going topside,” she says, contacting Kallo and Suvi over the comms. “Track for extraction.”

 _“Understood,”_ comes Kallo’s reply.

She hesitates, finger over the channels button of her omni-tool. On a whim, she presses it, hearing only static from the other end. “Raeka, come in.” She’s met with more silence. Maybe, just maybe, she survived. Maybe she escaped. Maybe— “Raeka, are you still there? Come in, _please._ ” But no answer comes, and she suspects no answer ever will. She’s dead, or gone, or captured, due to Ryder’s decision, but there’s nothing she can do about it now. If there’s a God—and she isn’t quite certain there is—she hopes that she can be forgiven.

She knows she won’t ever forgive herself.

“I’m sorry.”

It is by some miracle that they make it out alive, despite the multitude of Kett that try to stop them. Stubbornness and spite is the only thing that keeps her feet moving forward, that keeps her shooting at the damn Kett bastards like it’s the only thing in the entire goddamn universe that matters. Raeka’s death will not go in vain. If her blood is to stain Lia’s hands, then dammit, she’ll do her utmost to make her death matter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Plot, plot, plot, foreshadowing, and more plot. _Ugh._ Let me get back to writing the fluff. Damn you, narrative structure, with a need for a clear conflict, and resolution. (Might one day write a series of utterly unnecessary one shots of everyone being happy. Who knows.) Next chapter: turns out, dying--even for a few moments--in front of your love interest doesn't go over particularly well.


	12. Cygnus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  ~~Here I go again with the "C" named chapters.~~ In which Jaal confronts Lia for her stunt pulled back on the Archon's ship. ANYWAY. HAPPY CHRISTMAS EVE. (Or happy whatever it is when you're reading this!) This is part one of Ryder's breakdown, which is the next little plot arc we'll be exploring (because we can't remake who she is without breaking her down first, also 'cause I'm mean.) Warning ahead for detailed descriptions panic attacks, and the like.

She is still shaking from the battle; an ever-so-slight tremor that had started in her hands, and has now spread throughout her entire body, making every breath a gasp like she’s performed some sort of Herculean task. Perhaps she has. Ark Paarchero is far from the Archon’s ship, and Drack is celebrating with his scouts rather loudly in the galley of the Tempest—even through the closed doors that separate them, she can still hear them. Somehow, they’ve even managed to rope even Cora in, if Peebee’s shouting for the human to take more shots is any indication.

She can’t bring herself to join them. Lia couldn’t even look at Kallo when they’d boarded the Tempest, muttering an order for Vetra to debrief the rest of the crew in the morning. Lia felt bad about asking so much of the Turian, but Vetra’s stoic had slipped when she’d seen the grief painted clearly across the Pathfinder, and had only nodded in response.

Lia still isn’t certain that she’d made the right decision. With her still-shaking hands, she reaches out to brush her fingertips over the glass of Alec’s N7 helmet. It’s not the decision he would have made, she knows that. He would have saved Pathfinder Raeka—“She’s more important, the Initiative needs her, she’s a beacon of hope,” he’d argue. She does not know how he did it—how one could calculate the value of a life. Still, due to her own choices, she’s nothing more than another ghost that haunts her.

By the end of this, how much blood will be staining her hands?

She does not want to become her father, she knows that much. At the end, he’d been kind, putting the life of his daughter before his own life, but that was the first she’d seen of her dad in years. He’d become so unfamiliar to her by the end, little more than Alec, rather than the man who’d raised her. She understands it must not have been easy for him after Ellen’s death, but to recognise next to nothing of the man she’d known her whole life?

She doesn’t want Scott to wake up, and not recognise his own sister.

At the end of the day, she wants to be Lia first, and the Pathfinder second. At the end of the day, she wants to be able to sleep at night. At the end of the day… she wants to look back on the things she’s done for the Initiative, and say that she did the right thing.

 A bottle of brandy sits on the corner of her desk, two glasses neatly placed by its side. She reaches for a glass, and then catches a glimpse of her quivering hands. Lia sighs, setting the glass back down. She can’t make a habit of this. They’re still several hours out from the Nexus where they’ll need to ensure Ark Paarchero arrived safely, as well as arrange transport for Drack’s scouts. It’s enough time, a part of her says, to have a drink or two, but still, she restrains herself. Sober Lia has a hard enough time dealing with Tann as it is, and she’s certain she’ll punch the Salarian director of the Initiative if she’s even a little bit tipsy. Which only means that Addison will be on her case, and then Kesh will hear about it, which means _Drack_ will hear about it from his granddaughter, and he’ll tell everyone else aboard the Tempest including Cora, which means Cora will get on her case about it—

All in all, not worth the small amount of relief it’ll grant her.

And, not to mention, she don’t know how it’ll react with the neurotransmitters still in her bloodstream—which SAM had deactivated, thankfully—from the Archon. The short electromagnetic pulses SAM had needed to use to deactivate them had left her sore all over, and her biotics going crazy. Not to mention dying had left her with a _wicked_ headache. Another reason, Lia thinks with an amused snort, falling onto her bed face-down, she’s retreated to her room. The instant she steps outside those doors, Lexi will bombard her with exams. Truth be told, she doesn’t have the energy for them right now. Or to entertain anybody aboard the Tempest—

“What were you _thinking_?”

She has made a policy of rarely locking her door, if only so the others can get her if she’s needed—though most seem to recognise her hard work, and rarely dare to interrupt her time off. It’s her own fault for not locking it now. Lia should have known that someone would come in to reprimand her for her actions aboard the Archon’s ship, and should’ve ensured that the doors were locked if she wanted her privacy.

A part of her wonders if she wanted someone to come in, and tell her she’d fucked up—wonders if she wanted to be reminded that she’s only human, and shouldn’t be on the pedestal they’ve put her own.

Lia hides her face in her pillow, refusing to sit up, and look at the intruder. “Go away.”

_“You have to come down sometime.” Alec didn’t mean to sound harsh, she knew that, but he was all but spitting his words at his daughter, having no time nor patience for her petulance. “It’s your mother’s funeral.”_

_“Which is precisely,” Though her face was buried in the pillow, she hoped he knew she’d be glaring at him otherwise, “I do not want to go.”_

_“She’d be disappointed in you.”_

_“You do not get to say that.” She wasn’t angered by his words. She didn’t know if she had the capacity to be angry anymore. She was just… so goddamn tired. Couldn’t she just lay here until she withered to dust? Why could she not join her mother?_

_“Cordelia—”_

_“And you most certainly do not get to call me that.” It was her name—her full name—that finally got a rise out of her. She bolted upright, her bloodshot eyes glaring at him with the heat of a thousand suns. She could not remember the last time he’d called her anything but “Lia.” He was overcompensating now, trying to mimic Ellen’s habits in order to… to… to what? Sympathise? Empathise? Connect with his daughter, despite having largely ignored her since Mom had fallen ill? Dammit, she was going to get her name legally changed, if it meant that no one would call her Cordelia ever again._

_It was a plan she’d have to consider. Scott called her Dee anyways, and there wasn’t anyone else in her life whose opinions she particularly cared about, Alec included._

_“You’re behaving like a child.” Alec was not a patient man, and Lia knew how to get on every single one of his nerves. They were too similar, Ellen had always said. Both of them brash, and stubborn. To think she’d once looked up to him. To think she’d once wanted to be just like him. She did not recognise her father in the man who stood in front of her now. “Do you think this is what your mother would have wanted? She hasn’t even been gone a week, and we’re already at each other’s throats.”_

_“This isn’t about what Mom would’ve wanted, don’t lie to yourself.”_

_“Corde—”_

“Lia.” Jaal’s tone is still stern, like a parent reprimanding their child, but it’s become softer somehow. She can hear his footsteps as he—tentatively, she notes—treads closer. The bed creaks as he takes a seat beside her shaking form, and places a hand on her shoulder— _the thrum of bioelectricity as his skin comes in contact with hers_.

She wants to tell him to leave, to tell him to let her wallow in her suffering, to tell him to do nothing as she asks herself a million times over if she did the right thing. But the words escape her, and they die on her lips before they could escape, and be born. Instead, what comes out is a strangled noise as she chokes on the air in her throat, unable to send him away. “It had to be done,” she murmurs. It’s not an excuse, and she will never know what it was like to stand by, helpless, as the Pathfinder dies, but it was the only solution.

And she couldn’t have asked him to risk his life for her. That isn’t how this works. As Pathfinder—

“You could have died.” It’s not an accusation, more a statement of facts really, and she shifts her head just enough that she can peer through her lashes up at Jaal. He chews on his lower lip, thinking. He does not seem to notice that she’s looking up at him. He’s looking through her window, she realises, at the stars that pass in a blur of light. The Tempest can handle several FTL trips per day, but Kallo must be easing off. They’re in no hurry. Director Tann can wait. “ _Lia._ ”

“What do you want me to say, Jaal?” She’s in a fragile enough emotional state as it is. All she can hear is her mother’s voice, whispering the name the last time they said goodbye. All she can see is her father, saying that he still loved her despite her hating him moments before he died. Everything’s a blur, and she hurts all over, and _God_ , she just wants…

She doesn’t know what she wants.

“I could have died, yeah.” Her voice is barely above a whisper, and it cracks as she speaks. “But I also could have died yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. Every single day, I’m at the risk of dying. It’s part of the job. There hasn’t been a week yet where I haven’t needed to do something _incredibly_ stupid, but do you think I’m enjoying this? Do you think I enjoy coming back from the brink of death? We needed to escape, and SAM said it was the only option, so I took it.”

“It’s not your responsibility to save me.” He pauses. “To save us. The crew. The Tempest. The galaxy. Why would you even… why would you even do that?”

“Yes! It is!” She sits up, and the force of her movement startles him enough that finally— _finally_ —he looks at her. “It is my responsibility. It’s my duty to care for, and about you… All of you.” She tacks on the clarification rather lamely, but she doesn’t let it detract it from her statement. “It’s my responsibility,” she repeats, fighting back the frustrated tears that prick at her eyes. “ _You_ are my responsibility. And if someone has to get hurt, I’d rather it be me, because I don’t want to live in a universe without you in it.”

“And you think I do?”

She blinks as she looks away, the first tear rolling down her face. “I don’t know,” she confesses. “I… I don’t know. I just know that you’ve got a life outside the Initiative, a life outside—” _Of me,_ “—of all of this. When this is over, you can go back home. You have five mothers waiting for you. Everyone here has someone waiting for them to come back alive, and I _promised_ when I became the Pathfinder— _your_ Pathfinder, that I’d see you guys back safe.

“With each passing day, the likelihood of Scott waking up becomes less and less likely, so all things considered, I’m the least important person here on this ship. If my becoming Pathfinder has proved anything, it’s that anyone, despite their lack of training, can take up this godforsaken title. I _promised_ myself, Jaal. I promised that I would keep you—all of you—safe. I don’t want to break that. So, please, _please_ don’t tell me that what I did was foolish, because dammit, I know. I didn’t have a choice, and trust me, I don’t enjoy this any more than you do.” She catches a glimpse of Alec’s helmet—her helmet, she supposes—sitting on the table where she left it out of the corner of her eye. “I didn’t want any of this.”

It is then that the dam breaks, and she’s sobbing in his arms, face buried in the crook of his neck. Lia doesn’t know how much longer she can go on like this. Every time she thinks she’s been pushed to the breaking point, something comes along, and nudges her a little bit further. Soon she thinks there will be nothing left of her but a hollowed, empty shell of a woman, who she no longer recognises.

“When you died,” Jaal whispers, “when your heart stopped, I swore mine did too. I was angry, so angry. I could not believe what you had done. I thought that was the end, that you’d risked your life for nothing. I watched as SAM tried to restart your heart, and I thought to myself, ‘This is how she falls: trying to save others, until her dying breath.’ And when you came back, I realised…” He lets out a quiet, almost bitter laugh. “You stole the words I wanted to say. One step ahead, you always are.”

She collects herself just long enough to ask: “What words?”

Gently, once again giving her the opportunity to pull away from his touch, he turns her head to look her in the eyes. “That I do not want to live in a universe without you in it.” It’s not a response she’d expected from him, but his candour is something she admires about him, and can only hope to instil in herself. His openness almost makes her envious; the last time she was free to admit what she thought was before her Mom had fallen sick, and it’s been so long she’s almost forgotten what it was like. “Lia—”

“Cordelia.” She cannot bite her tongue, and the word falls from her lips before she can stop it like she had been desperate to get it out into the open. _Honesty_ —she needs to practice it to be better at it, after all. “My name. It’s Cordelia. Lia is… a nickname.”

“Cordelia,” he repeats, and his mouth cannot quite curl around the syllables. _Cordehleeah._ He draws it out, savouring it. It’s the first time she’s heard her name since Ellen died. She has to admit she likes how it sounds on his lips, and her heart does not twinge with the reminder of her mother. It’s different, somehow, and not just because of the way he pronounces it. From anybody else, she’d feel the need to correct the pronunciation, but it’s an indication that he’s trying to understand humans and their culture, understand _her_ , and it’s endearing rather than irritating. He coughs, and starts over. “Cordelia, you are not alone. Not in any of this. So do not leave those with you behind. The universe is better with you in it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cordelia, Cordelia, Cordelia. 'Cause we weren't heavy-handed enough with the name thing already. Going through my document, and up until this point, I noticed that the phrase "you are not/you're not/you aren't" has been used 11 times, and ten out of those eleven times, from Jaal to Lia or vice versa (the other one time is Lexi not clearing Ryder for active duty, but we'll ignore that). Don't know if I did this consciously because I pretty much always write this after about 2am, but hey, let's go with it because reaffirmations that the other is a good person hell fucking yeah. Truth be told, I wrote the entirety of this damn series (dammit, I even wrote a one shot about these two) around this one scene, because bringing your LI along to watch you die is hella fucked up, and BioWare should've capitalised on that. Shame on you, BioWare. ~~I don't mean that. Please hire me after I'm done my game design degree, please. I'll try to fix your mistakes.~~
> 
> If anyone's curious about the list of the ten times (in no particular order):
> 
> 1\. "Remember. You are not alone." - Jaal, to Ryder  
> 2\. "Remember: you are not alone." - Ryder, to Jaal (with a slightly different intonation and cadence.)  
> 3\. "You are not what I expected." - Ryder, to Jaal  
> 4\. "You are not the Kett." - Jaal's unspoken words to Ryder  
> 5\. "You are not like the last aliens who came to Heleus." - More unspoken words from Jaal to Ryder  
> 6\. "You are not Akksul." - Ryder, to Jaal  
> 7\. "You aren't alone in this." - Ryder, to Jaal  
> 8\. "You are not indestructible." - Jaal, to Ryder  
> 9\. "You aren't interrupting." - Ryder, to Jaal  
> 10\. "Cordelia, you are not alone." - Jaal, to Ryder


	13. Aquarius

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy yule/Christmas/Satinalia if you're in Dragon Age ;), have two very important, and very long chapters that mark the official end of Act II (The end of Act I was the end of Chapter Six: Circinus, if anyone's curious.) This chapter featuring a cameo from our favourite N7.

Though they are officially Lia’s now, the Pathfinder quarters aboard Ark Hyperion still feel as though they belong to Alec rather than her. His belongings still decorate the space, each its proper place—he’d never been anything but organised. She can’t count the number of times he’d reprimanded her for leaving her research notes on the Protheans everywhere. A paper copy of Lewis and Clark’s journals still sits by his desk, the last page he’d read haphazardly bookmarked with a label off a bottle of brandy.

Lia swivels in the desk chair, a cup of coffee from the coffee machine Ellen had given Alec when he’d been busy making SAM in one hand. The monitors before her flash with notifications of unread emails—half of which are from Tann, and she has no inclination of reading them. Addison and Kesh will fill her in on the important things, and she does not want to pour through the Salarian’s many-paged emails, trying to pick out the important information. One monitor is open with her own personal logs from the Tempest, something she’d thought unnecessary at first, but then their weeks without a strong foothold in Andromeda had stretched into months. Prideful she may not be, but she wants future citizens of Heleus to know that she’d tried her best, and it hadn’t been—entirely, anyway—her fault it had taken them so long.

Eight months. Eight _long_ months, by Earth standards. It’s almost difficult for her to wrap her mind around how long they have been in Heleus, and even harder to think about how long she’s gone without a single member of her family. Scott is recovering— _still_ recovering, she thinks bitterly—but his health is improving every day, if Harry’s daily emails are anything to go off of. She doesn’t know if she’s looking forward to Scott waking up, or dreading it. She misses him like nothing else, but to look him in the eyes, and tell him how Alec had died…

SAM had managed to allow a temporary connection, providing the twins with a single conversation, before Scott had needed to be re-sedated. Lia hadn’t been able to stop herself from telling her brother the truth about their attempts to live in Heleus—how the Scourge had decimated everything, how none of the Golden Worlds were habitable, how Alec had died and made her Pathfinder. She’d kept the grisly details out, but she knows she won’t be able to stop Scott from prying the instant he wakes up.

And it’s better, she thinks, that he hears the truth from her, rather than from someone else.

She scrolls through her log entries, sipping at her coffee, noting the stark difference between the frequency of her entries since she’d become Pathfinder, and when she’d been a part of the Alliance. Lia had once thought that her troubles as a recon specialist in the Alliance had been the worst she’d ever experience—there had been no honour in what the Alliance had asked her to do—but her crises seem nothing more than trivial in comparison to what she’s endured as Pathfinder.

Lia hesitates at the sight of an entry from 2183, hesitating as she decides whether or not to open the log. It’s been nearly six hundred and forty years, but she’d spent most of that time in cryo. In her mind, it’s been little under three years, and she can still remember that day like it was yesterday.

With great reluctance, she swipes the log open, stomach churning as she comes face to face with Nysa Shepard, posing for a picture wearing her N7 armour in the Citadel Tower aboard. She stands alongside the Turian Councillor, Sparatus, who looks just as displeased to be there as she does. Her thin lips are pressed in a line, blue-green eyes flashing beneath the stray locks of her golden hair—shaved on one side, despite Alliance protocol. The day she had been appointed as the first human Spectre, by decree of the Council. She hadn’t been pleased about it then, and she had made it clear that she’d wanted nothing to do with the Alliance, or the Council until her death later that year. In the background of the photo, barely visible, is a human woman with short, brown hair with hazel eyes, watching from afar.

Lia barely recognises herself in the picture.

_“Councillor Sparatus!” Lia clutched the many datapads to her chest as she ran after the Turian council member. She’d been transferred to Mars to protect the archaeologists still studying the Prothean artefacts on the planet’s surface from raiders but a few months earlier. She hadn’t though the pirates to be much of a threat when she’d first been stationed, but they’d nearly taken out two labs in the time she’d been there, and they were severely lacking resources to fend them off for much longer. Technically, she shouldn’t even have the clearance to access the Citadel Tower, but a childhood spent aboard the Citadel with an N7 as a parent—who’d had clearance, up until Alec’s dishonourable discharge in 2181—had given her an internal knowledge of the Tower’s staff, and workings. Smuggling her way up her hadn’t been hard in the slightest._

_The Turian councillor sighed, pivoting on his heel to turn to glare at her. “Lieutenant-Commander Ryder.” He rubs his forehead with one three-fingered hand, and muttered something under his breath she didn’t catch, his mandible clicking. “Should I do you the favour of not asking how you got up here?”_

_“Councillor Sparatus,”she started again. She didn’t have much time on the Citadel, not if she still wanted to go visit Ellen and Alec before needing to return to her ship. It was why she’d gone through the trouble of getting into the Tower, rather than waiting for Sparatus in his office. Multiple people had warned her that he was in a Council meeting with Commander Shepard—the sole survivor of a Thresher Maw attack on Akuze in 2177. By the looks of it, the meeting had just ended, and Lia’s timing couldn’t have been any more perfect. “It’s not my place to make demands—”_

_“You’re right. It’s not.”_

_She didn’t let him deter her. Many others had denied Ryder the help that she needed, and he was her last hope, at this point. “—but the situation on Mars is worse than it appears. If we don’t get some form of backup, some form of support from the Citadel, we’ll lose all of our labs. We need support from the Council if we’re expected to succeed.”_

_“You’ve been doing this for a while, Ryder,” Sparatus said, turning to leave. “I’m certain you can figure something out. Might I suggest leaving before I have to report you for trespassing? I’m not certain your family can handle another failed Ryder in the Alliance.”_

_His words were nothing short of a low blow. She had expected the Council to stand up for Alec when it’d come to light that he was working on an AI. He had been one of their best fighters, and most had expected the Council to waive the accusations in order to keep him in their military. But there had been a visiting Quarian ambassador on the Citadel that week, and the Council couldn’t afford to make light of the laws the Quarians had put in place to keep others from ending up as their race had. Thus, Alec had been discharged, and it had taken years for others to see the Ryder twins as anything more than an attempt for the Ryders to reclaim their honour after Alec’s mistakes._

_Lia couldn’t speak for Scott, but she’d succeeded in making a name for herself that wasn’t tainted by her father’s history. But that didn’t mean her father’s failings hadn’t affected her. The Alliance had offered her an opportunity to receive Interplanetary Combatives Training—or N7 school, as it was informally known—within a few months of her joining the Alliance military at age eighteen, provided she stayed with the Alliance until her nineteenth birthday. The offer had been immediately rescinded the instant Alec had been discharged, the email citing “external circumstances” as the reason though she’d known the truth._

_That hadn’t stopped her from climbing her way up from cadet to lieutenant-commander in two short years—a feat many would have called impossible for a woman who’d only been accepted into the Alliance due to her familial relations. It wasn’t as though the Alliance had been given much choice regarding her promotions, though. Her aim was deadly—the best sniper in the entire damn Alliance, many had called her—and she’d been a part of too many important missions for them to not promote Lia, if only to keep an eye on her._

_She had proven time, and time again, that she was more than just her father’s daughter, and Sparatus’ attempts to belittle her glanced off Lia, only serving to steel her. “Sir, I’m not asking for much. If Mars is left the way that it is, we’ll lose it within the week—”_

_Turians were not quite as frightening as the Krogans. They lacked the same impressive build as them, and though Turian plates would shrug off melee attacks, they were just as susceptible to blaster fire as any other Council race. That wasn’t to say, however, that an angered Turian wasn’t downright scary. Rows of razor-sharp teeth, and predatory eyes, and a stature that would make even a Krogan reconsider attacking them. It was this angered ferocity that Sparatus turned on her now, his eyes flashing dangerously. “Then why is it, Ryder, that you’ve left your post? A situation so precarious every man is needed, and you’re not there.”_

_She stammered, unable to come up with an adequate response. He was right, of course, but Lia’s visit to the Citadel had been a last ditch attempt to save Mars, couldn’t he see that? As it turned out, however, she didn’t need to reply to his question._

_Sparatus’ gaze travelled over her shoulder, to someone behind her. “Damn.”_

_Through the rather large crowd of reporters permitted to be in the Tower to report approved information to the citizens of the Citadel, Lia caught a glimpse of a human woman with golden hair in standard issue N7 armour. The Turian by her side growled at the reporters, hissing a threat that had the dark haired woman with them shake her head. The N7 stopped in her tracks, muttering something to the Turian and the other human, sending them away to deal with the reporters before slowly walking over to Sparatus and Lia._

_“Commander Shepard.” Sparatus was not pleased to see the woman in the slightest, but forced a grimaced smile to his lips—an expression that rarely translated well with the Turian physiology, and it was clear to Lia that he was doing little more than observing human customs._

_“I suppose I should thank you, Councillor.” Shepard reached forward to take Sparatus’ hands in one of her own, despite the Turian’s talons that were most certainly sharp enough to cut through her thick gloves. “For listening.”_

_He grunted in reply, clasping his hands behind his back the instant she let go. “Lieutenant-Commander Cordelia Ryder, this is Commander Nysa Shepard, our…” He hesitated, his own words paining him, “first human Spectre.”_

_“Ryder, huh?” Nysa Shepard raised her thin, blonde brows, drawing attention to the scar that cut her left one in two. “As in—”_

_“Alec Ryder,” she muttered in confirmation._

_“—Doctor Ellen Ryder?” she finished, giving the younger woman a small smile as she blinked, shocked. “I know your dad too, but not well. Only met him in passing. Your mother however…” She held up a hand, a purple-blue haze curling around her fingers. Biotics, Lia recognised. The reason, she would later remember, Shepard had survived Akuze when no one else had. “Your mother’s top of the field when it comes to biotics. Helped me on multiple occasions. I was sorry to hear about her illness.”_

_“Yeah…” she sighed. “I was too. Hasn’t stopped her from working.”_

_“She’s quite something, your mother.” Shepard glanced at Sparatus who couldn’t hide his swaying as he rocked back and forth on his heels, unsettled by the human Spectre before him. “Forgive me, am I interrupting something?”_

_Lia opened her mouth, about to explain the Mars situation to her, but Sparatus cut her off. “Not at all, Commander. I think your appointment as Spectre takes greater precedence.”_

_“Congratulations, ma’am.” Ryder might have to forgo visiting her parents, at this rate. She’d hoped that she’d have resolved the problem she’d come here to address by now, but it seemed unlikely. She didn’t know how much time Ellen had left, and was hoping to visit her at least one more time, but… Lia hoped her mother understand._

_She was starting to sound like her father, Lia realised with a shudder._

_Nysa scowled at Lia’s words, her displeasure all but palpable. “Don’t say that. This isn’t a position I wanted.”_

_Lia couldn’t say that she understood. They’d been trying to get a human accepted into the Spectres for years now, moving humanity one step closer to having a human on the Council itself. “Being a Spectre is—”_

_“An honour,” Nysa finished bitterly, “and one I didn’t want, but had to accept nonetheless. You’re young, Ryder. You’re going to understand one day that you’re going to be a part of something greater than yourself, and you’re going to love it at first. Then, as it always happens, you’ll lose something, and for a while, you’ll throw yourself into your work. You’ll continue to be a part of it, and you’ll give your life for your cause. Don’t let that happen. It isn’t worth it. This life isn’t all that they make it out to be. It’s nothing more than a distraction, and do what I didn’t: recognise that, and get out while you still can.”_

_“Shepaaaaard, need a little help here,” the Commander’s Turian companion called back at her, desperation clearly painted across his features. A rogue reporter slipped free, and he yelled for them to return to no avail._

_The Asari reporter raised her camera to take a picture, Shepard pulling Sparatus into frame at the last second. “Happy days for humanity!” the reporter said with a grin neither Shepard nor Sparatus matched, offering her congratulations to the Commander as the human woman stormed past her._

_Lia continued holding her datapads tight to her chest, precious information regarding Mars’ precarious state contained within—proof, as she knew Alliance superiors would demand from her, before they provided support. She wasn’t quite certain how to react to Shepard’s warnings. On one hand, she looked up to the Commander, and on the other, she couldn’t understand how the Commander did not care about the honour that had been bestowed upon her. If Lia had been appointed the first human Spectre, she would’ve been overjoyed. It’d be an opportunity to finally put her father’s mistakes behind her._

_She turned, shoving her datapads into Sparatus’ hands. “Fix this before it all goes south,” she said, refusing to take a no for an answer before making her way to the elevator._

Lia sighs, setting her coffee down on Alec’s desk— _her_ desk, she corrects as an afterthought. She’d almost been angry with Shepard for not being accepting of the role she’d been given, but now—six hundred years later, she thinks with some amusement—she understands. She’s died for the Initiative twice already, and yet she keeps returning because she has nothing else. Without the Initiative, she wouldn’t have a home, wouldn’t have a cause she believed in. Reyes may make living as an outlaw look easy, but she knows the truth. She knows that Kadara Port used to be twice as large before they lost people to starvation, to rampant violence, to disease, to Sloane’s cruelty—to everything the mysterious Charlatan is trying to fix.

The universe needs order, and the Initiative is willing to attempt to create that order, but they cannot do anything without their Pathfinders. The Initiative directors try their best—or at the very least, in Tann’s case, they put some degree of effort in—but they will never be the beacon of hope the people of Heleus need them to be. That job falls to the Pathfinder.

That job…

That job falls to her.

Commander Shepard she’d heard—and she doesn’t know if the rumours were true—had died for the Alliance. The last survivor of Akuze, felled by some rogue force, as she was tracking down hostile Geth forces. They’d never recovered her body; the Normandy torn apart, and every other crew member aboard surviving, save for Nysa. She’d given her life to save her crew, had done it without a second thought. An N7, a Spectre—gone, just like _that_. If Nysa had been defeated so easily, who’s to say the same won’t happen to Lia?

She glances back at the picture of Shepard and Sparatus, and sees that the grim propriety the Commander displays is little more than exhaustion. She’d been eaten away from the inside, until nothing but a hollowed husk of her had remained. But she’d kept marching on, performing her day to day actions with little variation, and no enthusiasm.

Lia wonders when Nysa had died if she’d been relieved.

A picture of Ellen smiling with her two children the day they’d left to join the military sits on the corner of Alec’s desk, the date—March 22nd, 2181, a mere day after the twins’ eighteen birthday—printed in the bottom right corner. Three months before Ellen was diagnosed, Lia thinks with some bitterness, four before Alec had started working on SAM.

Eight months before Alec had been discharged.

She cannot contain the scream that tears from her lips, nor can she stop herself from sweeping her hand across Alec’s desk, knocking everything to the floor. The glass of the photo shatters, spidery white veins stretched across its surface. The digital image somehow still intact, though it flickers in and out of focus. Lia slides to the ground, picking up the photo with shaking hands, running her thumb over Ellen Ryder’s grinning visage. How hadn’t they seen it sooner? The paleness to her skin, the bags under her eyes that hadn’t gone away no matter how much she’d slept?

They should’ve noticed.

They should’ve seen it.

They should’ve, they should’ve, they should’ve—

They should have saved her.

A broken sob escapes her, catching in her throat—still no tears, she notes angrily, still no fucking tears, even as her fingers start to bleed from the broken glass. Ellen is gone, Alec is gone, and Scott’s been in a coma for eight months. She’s lost everything that matters, and now she’s two million light years from home, more alone than ever. She’s fucked up time, and time again, but she can’t leave the Initiative because it’s the only thing that makes sense anymore. Raeka’s blood is on her hands, and so are the lives of all those she’s lost to the Archon, and the Kett. She should’ve saved them, just as she should’ve saved Ellen. People look up to her, and she cannot help but think that they shouldn’t.

SAM says something she doesn’t hear, but she catches him pause as though asking for permission, before proceeding without it.

She shouldn’t be the Pathfinder. She’s barely twenty three—she’s still a _child_ , and she doesn’t know what she’s doing. She makes blind guesses, hoping for the best, and people believe that she will be their saviour. She does not want this, but she, like Shepard, will accept this honour nonetheless.

Because it’s the only thing she can do, and it’s what everyone else needs.

The door hisses open, and she cannot bring herself to look up from Ellen’s picture. Her heart is in her throat, and her mind might as well be on Havarl because it’s certainly not here. The Pathfinder is falling apart at the seams.

Bioelectricity makes her biotics sing as a hand wraps around her waist, pulling her back into a rather bony chest. “I’m here,” Jaal whispers in her ear, his chin resting on the top of her head as he rocks them back and forth. “You’re safe.”


	14. Lupus

Jaal presses a steaming mug into her still-shaking, the warmth a welcome relief. The heat almost seems to seep into her bones, and citrusy steam curls into the air. “It is called _aantiav_ ,” the Angara says, nodding down at the purple-blue flower that floats on the drink’s surface. “A tea, of sorts, from Havarl.”

She barely has the energy to lift her head, let alone speak. “Do we know it’s not going to poison me?”

“I…” He hesitates. “Do not know. There is only one way to find out, I suppose.”

Though its scent may be similar to that of a grapefruit, or an orange, its taste is of cardamom, cloves, and cinnamon, with the hint of something bitter she cannot quite put her finger on. Medbay is but a shuttle ride away, and her week’s been shitty enough as it is, a trip to the doctor’s hardly fazes her. The tea does have it desired effect, however, and the shaking in her hands reduces to a slight tremor, and she can no longer hear her heart thumping in her ears. “Thank you,” she murmurs.

The Angara grunts his reply, before picking up the broken pieces of Lia’s coffee mug. She hadn’t even realised she’d broken it. He looks strange out of his _rofjiin_ , she thinks. She knows it displays his status, but he appears… off without it. She realises she’s so used to seeing him ready for battle, that she doesn’t know what he looks like—or what he does, even—when given a moment to relax.

“I don’t mean any offence,” she starts, wrapping a blanket around her shoulders, “but how… _why_ are you here?”

_Pathfinder,_ SAM says, his voice crackling from the monitor speakers rather than her implant, before Jaal can. _I noted your elevated heart rate, and asked for permission to contact outside aid. You were otherwise preoccupied, so I proceeded to contact Mr Ama Darav. Given your history with him—Jaal Ama Darav stands as your most contacted colleague in your emails—and Angaran culture regarding emotions, I saw him best suited to provide assistance. Should I make note to not do this in the future?_

Jaal flashes her a brief, tight-lipped smile. “He was rather… unclear of the nature with which I was required,” he says. “When someone tells me the Pathfinder needs help, I tend to assume that you are dying… again.” She doesn’t reply to that—she isn’t certain she could, even if she wants to. What is there to say? Thank you?

Actually, she supposes, a thank you _is_ in order, but her mouth still feels like she’s eaten sand, and she hopes Jaal knows she’s grateful anyway.

He pays her silence no heed, transferring the image of Ellen and her two children over to a datapad in order to dispose of the clear glass one she’d had it on. It’s not much use anymore, surface veined with cracks like lightening. It joins the shattered coffee mug in the garbage. “Your mother?” Jaal holds up the image, and upon meeting Ellen’s blue eyes, Lia almost breaks down again. “She looks like you.”

“She has Scott’s eyes.” Lia glances away to avoid looking at the picture for a moment longer, hands gripping the cup of Jaal’s tea like it’s a lifeline. “People always says he’s a lot more like her than I am. That I’m like my father.”

“Do you not want to be?”

She cannot contain the sharpness in her tone when she whips her head back to shoot him a sharp glare. “No. He tried his best, but when push came to shove, he was more interested in what he wanted than what everyone else needed.” She swallows. Hard. “It’s why I’m alive, and he’s not.”

“I cannot say that I dislike him as I never knew him.” Jaal—still holding the datapad with Ellen’s image on it—takes a seat beside her. Immediately, she looks away again, unable to catch a glimpse of Ellen without throwing the damn datapad across the room… Again. “However, if he had not died, you would not be here, and the universe—”

“Don’t go spouting your poetics,” she snaps, pushing herself to her feet, cup of _aantiav_ abandoned on the coffee table. Lia braces herself against the desk, breath coming in shuddering gasps. “Please. Not… not now. Truth be told, perhaps it’s better if you leave. You’ve done enough for me since Raeka died as it is—” Lia can’t believe it’s been four days since Raeka’s death. Tann had been so fucking _proud_ of her when she’d returned to the Nexus with Ark Paarchero in turn. A victory, he see it, even if they’d lost Raeka. But in her mind, it’s not a victory at all. “You don’t owe me anything. Thank you for the tea.”

“No.” He is adamant, refusing to bend, or cower, or abide by her orders. It’s insubordination at the least, treason at the most. She is his commanding officer, and it is his _duty_ to follow the orders she gives him, like it or not. “I am not leaving.”

“I order—”

“I do not care.” He sounds almost angered, as though he cannot believe that she would even ask this of him. “I will not stand by, and watch as you tear yourself apart over a mistake you had no choice but to make.”

“It isn’t just Raeka!” She whirls around to face him, hazel eyes flashing. “It’s Dad, and Kirkland, and everyone who died on the Nexus before the arks could arrive, and everyone who’s trapped in cryo not knowing if they ever arrived safe. It’s Scott, and the Angara the Kett turned into one of them, and everyone at Site 1 and Site 2 on Eos, and…”

“Cordelia…” Jaal sighs her name, taking a step closer towards her. Goddammit, she thinks. She’s kept her composure for so damn long, but ever since he’d come into her life, she cannot stop herself from falling apart. It’s happened too many times for it to be but a coincidence.

“I’m sorry. It’s not… _I’m_ not your responsibility.” She steps away from him before he can touch her, unable to look him in the eyes. This isn’t at all what Alec would want her to be. He never let anyone else see him fall apart. He had to be strong, he had to be what everyone else needed him to be. The only time she’d seen his façade crumble was in the minutes after Ellen had died. “I’m the one that’s supposed to be watching after you guys, but—”

“ _Cordelia_ ,” he repeats, a little more forceful this time. Her gaze meets his for a brief second, unable to stop herself from looking up at the way he says her name, before she glances away. “Why do you insist on acting as though you have to do this alone? You cannot continue like this.”

“Because I have to—”

“No. You do not.” He closes the distance between them, grabbing her wrist before she can pull away. “You know this, and yet you persist. I do not understand.”

“Call it human stubbornness.”

“I’ve met many humans, now,” he says. “I am more inclined to believe it is more ‘Cordelia stubbornness’ than anything else. Why do you not accept the aid that is offered to you?”

She knows the answer to that question, but she’s dreaded addressing it since she became Pathfinder. People have asked her the question before, and every time, she changes the subject so she can refrain from answering.

_No more running_.

Trying to avoid answering that question was what had led to the distance between Alec and his children. This entire time, she’d thought that becoming the Pathfinder Alec would have been is what she wants.

She knows now that this isn’t true.

Lia looks back at the picture of Ellen on her desk, her side starting to ache, and it isn’t from the scar the bullet had left behind on Voeld. In another life, Ellen would still be alive, and where would she be now? Still back in the Alliance military, never having met Jaal? Not much different than the Initiative, she thinks with some degree of bitterness. She would still be in service to something great than herself. She would still be forced to keep marching on even when it feels like she can’t take another step without falling over because people are watching her, and she has to put on a show.

_No_

_More_

_Running._

“Because I can’t get attached,” she whispers, and for the first time, she hears how broken she sounds. Jaal does not fight her—though his fingers are still wrapped around her wrist—as she lifts her hand, running her thumb over the scar that cuts a part of his cowl in two. “If I don’t remain distant, Jaal, I’d…”

Jaal furrows his brows. “You’d…?” When she doesn’t answer him, he presses for an answer. “Cordelia—”

“If anything happened to you, I don’t know what I’d do. Blame myself, probably, but if the Kett took you, made you into one of them… Jaal, I… I can’t… I can’t lose you. I need to be the Pathfinder, I need to stay impartial, I need to be able to continue on even if I lose you just as I’ve lost everyone else I’ve cared about. I need—”

“You need to realise you are not solely responsible for everyone’s well-being,” he finishes. “You will not lose me.”

She glances down at his lips, unable to meet his eyes. “Do you know,” she asks, slowly, “how far I’d go for fear of losing you? I’d walk to the ends of the universe, if only to save you. I’d fight until the last of the stars burned out, and even in the darkness, I’d search for you. It took me _six hundred years_ to find you, and I would do it all again if it meant you’d be standing by my side. I can’t do this without you, but what I have to? We are at war, and with every passing day the likelihood of you being torn from me… I’ve given every part of myself to the Initiative, Jaal, and every day, they ask for more. But this… us… _you_ …”

“You speak as though my life is in danger.” He has the audacity to chuckle, and she isn’t certain if he’s laughing at his own words, or something else only he knows. “And you speak as though it would not be my greatest sorrow to lose you, but if I am to die, let it be by your side.”

She cannot help but crack a small smile. Something about his light heartedness is contagious. “I’d rather you not die at all, if I’m being honest.”

He lets go of her wrist—she hadn’t even noticed he was still holding it—a smile gracing his lips. Instead, his hand settles over hers—still just behind the scar on the right side of his face. Her biotics rise up to meet his bioelectricity, energy swirling, and mixing; strange forces from two entirely different galaxies responding to each other, as though they were meant to be together. “There is much still in this world that I wish to experience,” he says, softly, quietly, like a promise uttered for her ears and no one else’s. He leans into her touch, and those crystalline blue eyes—so like the stars, she almost gets lost in them—watch her, the hint of something unfamiliar in them. Curiosity? Confusion?

_Awe._

“You are a remarkable, if not… _peculiar_ , woman,” is all he says, ducking his head so he’s at her level. And when they kiss, it’s like something within her ignites—a spark, a flame—and it terrifies her, but she longs for it all the same. It burns with the heat of a million suns, and the voices that warn her that this is a terrible idea should be eating her up inside— _you need to be distant, Ryder. You cannot afford to form close bonds with those you’re at risk for losing._

But all she hears is silence.

So she pulls him in closer, his name whispered like a prayer on her lips every time they need to part for air. _Jaal, Jaal, Jaal, Jaal,_ repeated over and over until it’s the only thing she can hear, the only thing in her mind.

And from him, her name, spilling like water in a glass that’s too full, and hushed like a voice carried on the wind. _Lia_.

There is no mention of the Initiative, no mention of the terrors they will face in the coming days. There is no mention of _Pathfinder_ , and there is no mention of _Ryder_. In his arms, with his lips pressed against hers, and the gentle hum under her skin from his bioelectrics and her biotics, she is just what he says she is. No more, and no less, than Lia, and she has little intention of ever being anyone else again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that just happened. Thoughts, opinions, anything? I didn't want to mess with the canonical romance _too_ much, but I wanted something that came before the whole "meeting Jaal's family" kiss scene. Totally going with some heavy Twelfth Doctor/Clara Oswald themes here ("Do you know how far I'd go for fear of losing you?" is a direct reference to "Do you know how far I went for fear of losing you?" from Season 9, as is Lia's repeated insistence that it's her duty to care, playing off the Doctor's "I have a duty of care(r)" because I am.... a nerd.)
> 
> Anyhow, I'll be back before the New Year's, but I need to flesh out my plan for Act III ('cause I'm a bad writer who hasn't done that yet) so I'm going to take probably a week off. :D


	15. Libra

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY NEW YEAR'S! Well, I'm slightly late, but wahey still posted a chapter so uhhhh that's something, I suppose? Anyway, here's our introduction to the next major plot arc--enjoy!

_“You, more than anyone, know how dangerous Akksul is.”_

Lia hovers in the door way, swaying back and forth on her feet. It’s been nearly two weeks since they’d last been on the Nexus. A two weeks since Lia and Jaal had… Her thumb brushes over her lower lip— _he tastes of autumn, of the smell of dust after rain, of lightning, of something she cannot describe but it makes her head spin anyway—_ still debating whether or not this is a good idea. They still haven’t spoken about the kiss— _heat flares in her chest, settling in the pit of her stomach. She doesn’t know if she simply can’t breathe, or if he’s stealing her breath away every time their lips collide_ —and while she would have been fine with kissing and running once, she’s promised herself she would stop running away. It’s time now, she thinks, that she faces her problems head on.

Still, she feels like she’s interrupting.

“Why were they allowed to speak with him?” Jaal growls, head in his hands. He looks out between his fingers, gaze meeting Lia’s for a split second. Despite his frustration, he wears a small smile. It’s nothing short of an unspoken request— _Stay?_

She presses her lips together, tightly. It’s neither a sign of pleasure nor displeasure, and she steps further into the tech lab which Jaal has spent the past five months making his own. She can hardly believe that they’ve been in Andromeda for eight months now. What has she to show for it? A settlement on Eos, and another on Voeld? It isn’t enough, but then again, she knows it will never be enough. Addison will not leave her alone until all members of the Initiative have somewhere to live, and as she keeps reminding Lia, she needs to establish footholds on a few other planets.

She’s considering setting up an outpost on Kadara, if only to irritate Tann.

Well, that and the fact that having an Initiative outpost would boost the economy, and perhaps lower the crime rate in, and around Kadara port.

 _“They aren’t children anymore.”_ The voices crackling over the comms are distinctly Angaran, and possesses the reprimanding tone only a mother could fully utilise. _“You remember how you were.”_

Lia glances over at the comms display, trying to see who it is Jaal is speaking with. Her translator deciphers the _shelesh_ immediately, and two names flash across the screen: Vaasana, and Feladyr. They sound vaguely familiar, and she must appear quizzical for Jaal looks over to her mouthing: _My mothers._

Ah, she thinks, that would do it.

_“Please, Jaal!”_

He lets out a heavy breath at his mothers’ insistences, but nods nonetheless, not that they can see. He looks resigned, defeated, unlike the optimistic Angara she has come to know. “I’ll bring them home,” Jaal says, disconnecting the call.

She leans against a metal frame supporting a glass pane that divides Jaal’s personal space from the rest of the room. It’s hardly needed—no one comes in here besides Jaal, and Lia anyway. And, quite frankly, she’s only ever here to see him. “Bad news from home?” Their kiss is the furthest thing from her mind right now. How could it be more important than whatever it is he’s going through right now?

She’s twenty three—six hundred and twenty three, if she’s being pedantic—and she’s mature enough to recognise that there are other, more pressing concerns at hand.

“Bad news,” he repeats, scoffing. “Yes, I suppose you could say that seeing as two of my brothers, and one of my sisters have joined the Roekaar.” The sharpness of his voice almost takes her by surprise. Not even in combat is he this angered. Instead, he goes quiet, holding his breath to fire his rifle as precisely as possible. He’s the only marksman she’s ever met who compares to her. She might even say that he’s better, damaged by that her pride may be.

Lia cannot hide the disgust that flashes across her features at the mention of Akksul’s radical group. She understands their fear of the Initiative aliens, understands that they’ve done what all her history books warned her not to—which is, to say, showing up out of the blue, in land that does not belong to them, and claiming it as their own. They are refugees, to an extent, though the precise nature of why the Initiative was founded is still unknown to her—she’s trying to put the pieces together, but it’s rather difficult when the pieces are locked in her father’s memories, accessible only through her SAM implant in files she does not have the permission to access. However, that does not mean that the Angara are obligated to give them a home.

Even if they will die without one.

“Akksul,” Jaal continues, pushing himself to his feet, equally as disgusted by his former friend as she is, “has poisoned them with his hatred of aliens.”

She watches as he fiddles with various spare parts. From what she can recognise on the table, it appears as though he’s been dismantling Kett weapons, to what end, she does not know. “And now, you’re bringing them home at your mothers’ behest,” she says, the situation clearing up a little more. “Are we going to lose you to Akksul too?”

The barrel of a Kett gun hits the counter with a clatter, falling out of Jaal’s hands. “Is that what you think of me?” he asks, voice low, and dangerous. “You think that I would be so easily swayed? Have I not proved time and again that I can be trusted, or do you—” Jaal cuts himself off abruptly, stopping just before he can raise his voice to a shout. It was a stupid question for her to ask, and she doesn’t quite know why she’d even asked it in the first place. A nagging doubt that has been bothering her for longer than she’d care to admit? Is he right, in that she still does not trust him? Is she incapable of separating him from Akksul? Questions, all of which she does not have an answer to.

She bows her head, cheeks flushed with shame. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you must forgive me.” Jaal turns, and she can see that his eyes are brimming with tears. “You have reason to be concerned. Akksul and his men want you dead above anything else. I know you too well to be anything but a threat should I join him.”

“Knowing me is all well and good, and would definitely give you the upper hand, but I think you could kill me just fine with your rifle.”

He cracks a small smile. She notes his silver piercings, on the ridge of his cowl just above his scar, almost seem to glow blue. She wonders if her own are visible—three helix piercings, “But I have no intention of killing you, so it is a problem we need not worry about.”

She isn’t quite certain if she should be flattered, or relieved. Both, perhaps? “Do you know where they are?”

“The Roekaar have made camp at the Forge. Many consider it the… birthplace of our civilization. Akksul _likely_ believes this bold move will create more fanatics to his cause.” His anger has faded into frustration, and it’s clear that he cannot believe this is what has become of his friend. But she understands Akksul, to an extent. He’d been captured and taken prisoner by the Kett, and she daren’t dream of the horrors he’d been forced to endure there. Akksul had not been born hating outsiders. Through cruelty and suffering, he had been made into the man he is now.

She can’t even imagine what that would be like.

“Cordelia,” Jaal whispers, and almost instinctively, she reaches out for his hand, taking it in her own. “He has my family,” he continues, voice cracking, “but I don’t think I can do this alone.”

“You silly fool,” she says, giving his hand a squeeze. “You don’t have to. Why would you even think that?” _Remember,_ she wants to say with words that he’d spoken to her three months ago, _you are not alone_.

“No hesitation.” He holds her gaze, and though his single-lens eyes display is flashing with all sorts of notifications—presumably from his five mothers—he pays them no heed. Instead he leans into her touch, chest rumbling with a laugh. “That is what I love about you.”

She swears her heart stops. “Jaal—”

“I have a contact who’s been monitoring the Roekaar,” he says, ignoring her entirely as he sets about making preparations on a nearby screen. “I’ll set up a rendezvous with her. I suggest you tell Kallo to make for Havarl. I believe we should be able to get my brothers and sisters back before nightfall—before Akksul can poison them even more.”

“ _Jaal_ ,” she repeats, a little more forceful this time. At last, he looks back at her, quizzical. “Can we… can we talk?” He hesitates, finger hovering millimetres above the holographic display in front of him. Jaal waits for her to continue, to bring up the matter she wishes to discuss with him.

 _I can’t help but feel like this relationship is entirely inappropriate,_ she wants to say. _A Pathfinder and a member of her crew? This is dangerous, illicit, but… but when you said that you loved my lack of hesitation when it comes to helping others, when you said you loved a part of me, no matter how small, I felt… I felt like none of that mattered, and I want to know if you feel the same._

But instead, she bites her tongue, shaking her head. Jaal’s right—they need to get his siblings back. She’s waited two weeks, and she can wait another day. “We’ll get them back,” she says, forcing a smile to her lips. “I promise.”

He returns her smile with one of his own. “I have faith in our ability. In _your_ ability. I was fearful because I thought I would be doing this alone, but with your aid…” He looks at the display, then back at her. “You should talk to Kallo if we are to get there in reasonable time.”

“I… Yes. Of course.” She ducks her head, muttering, “Do excuse me,” under her breath as she exits the room. She’s breathless, and for reasons she doesn’t quite understand. She almost walks into Peebee as she comes out of the tech lab, but just as a sly grin stretches across the Asari’s face, Lia shoots her a sharp glare. “ _Don’t_.”

“You busy, Pathfinder?” Peebee asks, feigning innocence as she rests her weight on one foot. “Or has something else got your attention?”

She swears everyone aboard the Tempest knows about the dance she and Jaal have been performing for the past couple weeks. “Peebee…” she says warningly. “Is there something you’re supposed to be doing right now that _isn’t_ harassing me?”

“No.” A pause. “ _SHIT!_ ” She makes for the back of the Tempest at top speed, her feet slapping against the floor. “Vetra! VETRA! _VETRA!_ WE FORGOT ABOUT—”

Lia can’t help but laugh as the door hisses shut behind the young Asari, cutting her off.


	16. Cepheus

Though she maintains her cool composure, Lia feels sick to her stomach. She tries to focus on the thrum of the shuttle under her fingertips, but she still feel like she’s about to retch on the floor grates. Akksul is not a threat when he is alone—or when the Moshae is in the room, like Lia’s last meeting with him—but she’s about to go into the lion’s den. She has no idea how many men he has with him, but she’s certain she, Jaal, and Vetra are outnumbered. The Roekaar leader is terrifying as it is, and now she is to face him, and ask for Jaal’s siblings back?

She has a sneaking suspicion that it will not be easy, but what choice does she have? Refuse Jaal, and turn this ship right back ‘round, leaving his siblings to remain in Akksul’s hands? Her fear of the Roekaar is irrelevant right now, the mission comes first. She’s normally quite good at putting her own personal problems aside to focus on the matter at hand—what has changed?

She presses her knuckles to her lips, against which her name had been murmured by another in both pleas and prayers.

She knows the answer to her own question, and he’s sitting right in front of her.

Lia fiddles with a strap of her armour—her armour? Alec’s armour? It’s hers now, but as August Bradley had pointed out, she hadn’t earned the title of N7. It doesn’t feel as though it belongs to her, like she’s borrowing someone else’s coat if only to go out in the cold, knowing she’ll have to return it by the end of the night. Strange, Lia thinks. Not weeks ago, she’d had no problem with it. Now…

Now she isn’t so sure.

“Jaal?” she says, softly, so Vetra doesn’t hear. It takes a moment for the Angara in question to look back at her, too busy engaged in a conversation with the pilot about where they need to land. Without her reflective helmet on—the one Alec had given her to save her life, and the one she’d left on the shelf on the Tempest—her face can be seen, and their eyes lock.

He mutters something to the pilot she does not catch, and moves to take a seat beside Lia. “Yes?”

“You said that the place that we’re going to, the Forge, that it was a place many considered to be the birthplace of your people.” If she focuses on the mission details, perhaps she can forget about the nervousness that eats at her from inside. “What… what is it? A holy place? A temple?”

Jaal pauses, scanning her features. “You fear that your presence at the Forge will be an offence to my people.” She’d thought she had appeared stoic, her lips pressed into a line, her brow furrowed, but then again, she’d never been particularly good at hiding her emotions from him. Lia fears much more than that, of course, given the fact that they will undoubtedly come face to face with Akksul, but the thought had crossed her mind.

“When humans first started exploring other regions of Earth, regions they were not from, they did not do so kindly,” Lia murmurs. “They ‘discovered’ lands where people had been living for hundreds, if not thousands of years before they’d ever stepped foot there. They brought diseases with them that wiped half of the native population out.

“They… they committed atrocities that left our history scarred for the next millennia to come, taking people as slaves, killing all those who dared to defy them, and all those who didn’t for fear that they one day would. They burned villages to the ground, destroyed temples to gods they did not believe in, all in the name of colonisation, and ‘saving the savages’ who had once resided there. I refuse to let the Initiative repeat history. We are here because we have nowhere else to go, if the few reports that we have are anything to go by. We are because we need a home. Should the Angara would not want a human like me stepping foot inside the Forge—”

“Stop.” He places a hand on hers, cutting her off before she can fall into the pit of despair she seems to be looking into. “A human like you? The Angara would be honoured to have a human such as yourself share in our history, Cordelia. The fact that you fear becoming as cruel as your ancestors were proves that you are not one of them. And should anyone protest a human and a Turian visiting the Forge…” Jaal casts a glance at Vetra, who is trying very hard to appear as though she isn’t listening to every word of their conversation. “I am certain the Moshae would have a few words to say. Your presence will give the Roekaar a difference perspective.” He looks out the window over her shoulder, the shuttle shuddering as it lands. “We’re here. Follow my lead. We’ll get my family back.”

He’s out the door with his rifle slung over his shoulder the instant the doors hiss open.

“So,” says Vetra, nudging her side. “ _Cordelia_ , huh?”

She had almost forgotten that she’d been listed as Lia Casta Ryder on nearly every one of the Initiative’s files on her. As far as even Addison, Tann, and Kesh were aware, it is her full name. She has a sneaking suspicion that the Turian will not let this go. She also has no doubts that the entire crew of the Tempest will know by the end of the day. “Shut up,” is all Lia mumbles, much to Vetra’s amusement, as she hops out of the shuttle.

Havarl is a beautiful planet, perhaps one of her favourites. Everything is coloured in vibrant shades of violet, and teal, and the plants are speckled with luminescent dots that cast the entire space in a pale blue glow. If this is where the Angara are from, she’s starting to understand the rich hues of their skin—a form of natural camouflage, she suspects, though the Angara have long since become the dominating species in Heleus.

The glowing water—due to the bioluminescent plant debris, as Jaal had informed her the first time they’d visited Havarl—stains her boots as she dips her toe in. After a second, her foot starts to emanate a soft light. She cannot keep back the smile off her lips. She suspects it will never cease to entertain her.

Jaal mimics her smile, but his words lack amusement as he continues forwards, Kett rifle gripped tight in his hands. “Move slowly, and carefully. We don’t want to alert the Roekaar,” he warns though none of them had ever considered doing anything else. Lia’s skills are much better suited for getting the jump on an enemy, picking them off with headshots through the scope of her sniper rifle before they’ve even noticed she’s behind enemy lines before disappearing. Vetra’s a louder fighter, but she knows when the follow everyone else’s lead, rather than charging in.

She casts a look up at the pale pink skies, pushing a rather large leaf out of her way. “Do we know where we’re going, exactly? Or are we just going to wander around, and hope for the best?”

“You sound like you don’t want to be here, Ryder,” comes Vetra.

“No, of course I do, it’s just… I have had it up to _here_ with Akksul.” To make her point, Lia holds a hand just above her head. “You know?”

Vetra takes a step closer, cocking her head at the Pathfinder. “I dunno. That’s not all that high.”

“You’re a good foot taller than me!”

“That’s not _my_ problem,” the Turian shoots back, but she’s grinning from ear to ear despite her harassment of the shorter human. “Even Jaal’s about my height.”

The Angara in question clears his throat, bringing his teammates’ attention back to the matter at hand. “We do know where we are going,” he assures. “The Moshae brings all of her students to the Forge. It is one of the few things still surviving that both predates the Scourage, and is Angaran in nature. I came more times than just the once with the Moshae, eager to study it. I know my way around. What is that human phrase you use? Know it like the back of my hand?” When Lia nods, he mutters, “I do not know what the back of my hand looks like. I do not care enough to look.”

“It’s a metaphor.”

“Simile.”

“Vetra, I swear to _God_ ,” hisses Lia, the Turian bursting into a fit of laughter. They adore each other, really, but Vetra seems to have taken the Pathfinder on as a younger sibling. Her company, Lia admits, is treasured. Jaal respects her too much to try to get under her skin, but Vetra—and Peebee, to an extent, though it’s in her nature to be irritating, and it isn’t Lia-specific—holds no qualms about trying to piss her off. She has to admit, she’d almost missed the teasing.

To think, for the longest time, she’d wanted nothing to do with Scott. Now, all she can think about is hoping he wakes up.

“The govataan,” Jaal continues, undeterred by Vetra and Lia’s childishness, “a welcome centre, is up ahead.”

They creep silently through the underbrush, weapons at the ready if Akksul’s men come out of nowhere, firing their guns before the Pathfinder has even had an opportunity to explain why they are there. It’s happened more times than she cares to count. Lia half expects it to happen again, running through what she will do if they walk into an ambush, going over it again and again. _Drop gun. Raise hands. I need to speak with Akksul. Drop gun. Raise hands. I need to speak with Akksul. Drop gun. Raise hands. I need—_

But the govataan is empty.

It isn’t just devoid of the Roekaar, but devoid of life entirely. Empty crates litter the grounds, and the doors to the short buildings with slightly rounded rooves—like dinner plates—are jammed open. Muddies footprints track the rough stone walkways cut between buildings, distinctly Angaran with three wide toes. There isn’t a sign of a struggle, only signs of the inhabitants rushing to abandon the site. Somehow, she thinks, it’s almost worse. What led them to flee? The Roekaar? They are not anywhere to be seen, but that isn’t to say that they couldn’t have swept through, and…

She does not want to know what they did to the people here.

Lia pushes a curling lock of chestnut hair behind her ear with one hand. The other still grasps her rifle, but her grip has loosened somewhat. She’s wary, cautious, ready for an enemy to come out at a moment’s notice, but even the infrared scanners she’d had implemented into her scope detect no lifeforms. Either the Roekaar are cloaked, or they’re simply not… “Where is everyone?” she asks.

Neither Jaal nor Vetra know the answer. “Perhaps they knew we were coming, and decided to turn tail?” the Turian suggests. It seems unlikely, but then again, so does all of this. If this is a welcome centre, military sense dictates that there should be _someone_ here to ward off potential visitors. Though the Moshae hasn’t been spending the majority of her free time teaching since she’d been freed from the Kett facility, she still has students. Students she might have brought here today, on a whim.

Though the Moshae still disagrees with how Lia had handled the destruction of the Kett facility, they’d become close in the past few weeks. She isn’t a scholar by any means, but being one of the commanding officers of the Prothean research station on Mars had given her an understanding of the Protheans that surpassed most ordinary people. Well, it isn’t _entirely_ just what she’d picked up. She’d almost become an Alliance archaeologist, but when Alec had been discharged a month after she’d enrolled in the military training program, she’d had no choice but to pursue a career that would redeem her family’s honour.

She still isn’t certain if she made the right choice.

 Jaal wanders the govataan, the colour drained from his face, as though he’s returned to visit the ghost of a place he once knew. He is a child returning home for the first time in years, only to discover that his parents had long since moved away, and his house is little more than ashes that stain the snow. “It’s… it’s deserted.” He sounds hollow, empty. Is it disbelief, she wonders, or is it fear that the worst has happened? “I don’t understand.”

She drops to her knees, examining the prints feet have left behind on the stone. The mud has yet to dry, but she doesn’t know enough about tracking—or how long it takes for the mud on Havarl to dry, for that matter—to determine how long ago the prints were from. “How many people are normally here?”

“Fifty? Maybe a hundred?” She isn’t certain if she’s ever seen him this pale, this close to falling apart. “ _Ryder_ —”

 She doesn’t have time to react his sudden use of her last name, as much as she wishes she did, as Vetra calls for them, having wandered off on her own. Instead, she bites her tongue as her stomach twists. What if he regrets their kiss? Should _she_ regret their kiss? _Lia, for fuck’s sake, you’re behaving like a teenager._ Maybe so, a part of her replies, but something about her—her, what? Relationship? Tryst?— _connection_ with Jaal is different.

But all her worries and concerns escape her as she her eyes fall upon what Vetra had called them over to see. “Is that…?” she starts, heart in her throat as she turns her scanner onto the blue splatter that stains the floor.

 _Pathfinder, the blood is Angaran. Angle of impact, and back splatter suggests blunt force trauma._ SAM chimes in.

Jaal’s hands curl into fists, and a slight tremor wracks his body. “Akksul doesn’t hurt Angara,” he says, but for all his angered determination, he doesn’t seem to believe his own words. “He doesn’t kill them. It would ruin his cause. He cannot fight for us, and then fight us.”

She knows she isn’t included in the “us” he speaks of.

 _Taking the amount of blood into consideration, it suggest a non-lethal blow._ SAM is getting better and better with inflection with every passing day, but all emotion is devoid from his statement. It’s cold, calculating, and through their mental connection, she gets the impression that SAM is trying to be impartial if only to comfort Jaal. He has the tone of a doctor telling a patient their diagnosis.

Her gaze darts to the cracked glass window, as though someone had been thrown into it during a fight. What is Akksul doing? Harming his own people in a desperate attempt to get to the Forge? _Why?_ There’s something they’re missing, something they don’t yet know, something—

Lips press together, and fingers curl around the barrel of her sniper rifle. They need to move quickly; they don’t have time to stand about, and ask if Akksul’s desperation has made him the very monster he fights against. She knows how easy it is to fall down that slope, and for the first time since she’d known the Roekaar leader, she feels nothing but sympathy for him. She’d had her friends to pull her back from the edge, while Akksul had no one. Cora and Vetra, who’d come to see her as a sister, and had refused to let a member of their family fall apart. Peebee and Liam, with her ardent affections, and his amicable nature, always lightening the mood before Lia started to think that their efforts were all for nothing. Drax and Lexi who had seen this path of self-destruction before, in both themselves and in others, and who knew just how to bring her back to reality.

And Jaal, with his…

She swallows, refusing to dwell on that subject. Now is not the time to ask herself the question that’s been on the tip of her tongue ever since their kiss: _am I starting to fall in love with him?_

Lia knows it’s improper, knows that it breaks every single code about fraternization in the Initiative rulebook. While she could get away with pursuing a personal relation with the other crew members of the Tempest despite the aforementioned rules, she knows Jaal is held to a different standard. He is, first and foremost, loyal to the Angara. Lia might trust him, trust that despite his predispositions, he poses no threat to the Initiative’s safety, she knows that Initiative higher-ups will not think the same.

She has never been afraid of breaking a few rules, of pushing a few boundaries. What she fears is that, one day, she may have to face the dilemma the Salarian recruitment officer had posed. If she was forced between saving him, and saving people who could save the lives of all those who live in Heleus, who would she choose?

_Heart or the head, heart or the head, heart or the—_

She tries to tell herself that she’d follow her head, not her heart. She tries to tell herself that she’d choose the greater good over Jaal’s life. She tries to tell herself that she’s the Pathfinder before she’s anyone else, and her duty comes before her personal desires.

_“Do you know how far I’d go for fear of losing you?”_

But she can’t, because it isn’t true. She would do anything to save him, even if hundreds, thousands, _millions_ —died for it. It’s a selfish decision, one that a better Pathfinder would not make.

Lia realises then that her father—a man who’d been the better Pathfinder, in her mind—had made just that decision. He’d saved his daughter at the cost of his own life, the Initiative be damned. His reasons are still unclear to her, many of his memories that had been transferred over to her via SAM still inaccessible. But he’d saved her, followed his heart for perhaps the first time in his life, rather than his head.

And as she looks back at Jaal over her shoulder—he’s distracted, gaze focused elsewhere, and his eyes glassy—she knows she would choose him, his life, his safety, _him_ over anything else.

 _Am I starting to fall in love with him?_ Lia asks herself.

The answer comes to her, and she knows without a doubt that it is true: _yes._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, shit, what? Alec Ryder wouldn't be the "perfect" Pathfinder? Alec Ryder is human, and has made many mistakes, and Lia shouldn't idolise him? What a _revelation_ , Lia, thank you. In all seriousness, wow, our little Cordelia is growing up and recognising that comparing herself to Alec isn't necessarily the best idea. (Also, thanks to this fic, my search history is riddled with Google searches about rules regarding fraternization in various military groups.) Next chapter: a not so friendly introduction to Jaal's family.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a million things I should be doing. Studying for exams, starting and finishing my final projects, working on my longfic but uh... how about I avoid all of that instead? Anyway, here's a pic of Lia. Find me at pixelyna.tumblr.com _*finger guns and disappears into the distance*_
> 
>  


End file.
